The Third Policeman

A weird book. I didn't get anything from it. Pages and pages of rambling nonsense. If you're not looking to gain something from each book you read, and a book's task is just to help you pass the time, then go ahead.

An unusual book, to be sure. Its closest counterpart might be Alice in Wonderland, but where Alice has whimsy, clever wordplay, unforgettable characters, and the most quotable dialogue this side of Shakespeare, The Third Policeman has a strangeness, an obsession with bicycles, and a rather limited palette of actors and settings.

It sparked into life on a few occasions (most notably in the discussion of DeSelby, a philosopher/physicist who never appears but whose ideas are revealed at length), but was ultimately a bit wearying. The final chapter had some power--I can imagine the same book at half the length (just cut any reference to a bicycle) and it would be much more satisfying.

(Probably bicycles are metaphors for something and if I figured it out I'd enjoy the book 1000 times more, but I didn't, so I didn't).

Loved this, typical O'Brien genius, with hell being depicted as nothing more than a skewed and repeating version of normality. Not for lovers of normal narrative, but this author was always about challenging assumptions about society, identity, language, intellectualism, and morality.

Pay attention now. In order to enjoy this book, you must mix equal parts of:

Kafka

Borges

Douglas Adams

LSD

Stir carefully. If your head hurts, put it down for a while and take an aspirin. Other than that, it's brilliant. Just brilliant.

Not what I expected. Very funny, made me laugh on numerous occasions.

Man, call me a philistine, but I don't know what the hell just happened!

Hilarious and absurd and surreal and beautifully strange. Great writing, great characters, great setting. I was disappointed to find that I didn't understand everything and it had to be explained in an author's note at the end.

What an absolute pleasure to listen to the audiobook. I loved it so much that I will buy a hard copy to read!

On audiobook. Wierd and wonderful

Excellent in every way. You must be a person who can appreciate both the absurd and the literary at the same time. The narration is perfect for this book and helps give it great life. Enjoy!

this book is utterly boring and does not have a believable plot. I wouldn't bother trying to listen to it.

Really original. Often you can guess what’s next, but not this time. Has an Alice in Wonderland absurdity quality to the story. Not really my normal read, but a creative and well written change if you are up for something different

I made my subscription just to hear this audiobook and I am not at all disappointed, loved it! The narrator was changing his voice whenever he was speaking as a different character. Its very well done, thank you!

Bizarro before Bizarro was a glimmer in your grandaddy's cataracts! Absurdist genius, this book floored me with its sleek wit, and mind bending humour. Subtle in its magnitude, and bizarrely profound too. Flann O'Brien is a master, without a doubt! Really good reading by Jim Norton, who adds vim and vigour with his selection of colourful Irish accents.

Full of unoriginal descriptions that go on for too long, full of exposition that despite being expressed largely through dialogue falls flat, scenes go on for far too long; it’s the like the guy has never heard of word economy takes 3 lines to say what a decent author could say in 3 words. The performance is also fairly irritating, for the most part it’s fine but as soon as he tries to do voices especially the voices of older men, I started to cringe more and more the longer it went on. The story is pretty good though all things considered, I just feel a better author could have done a much better job with the idea and framed it in more engrossing way. Also I feel a better narrator such as the guys that narrated Beckett’s Molloy trilogy would have made it flow more nicely.

“Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.” ― Flann O'Brien, The Third PolicemanThis is an insane book. I mean that in the best way, I really do: So much bizarre stuff happens in this book, you have to turn your brain off and just enjoy the ride. Policemen obsessed with bicycles. Wooden-legged men. Murderers. Eternity. It's all here, and it's all worth reading. What a pancake!

Every sentence is a small work of art, they form a masterpiece.

Marvellous plot and a very musical language, but a fair warning - people don't write like that anymore

Entertaining and well performed by narrator Jim Norton. two words.

what um what. ?!?! ?! ?! ?! ........yeah! ..... :)

Brilliant writing and brilliant delivery!
A once in a lifetime book.

Very strange!

Creepy and wholly fantastic. Contains some of the more outrageous conversations I have ever read in a book.

Like Joyce this book is more about structure than it is about plot. It's a whacky, weird tale within a tale within another tale. Don't worry what it's about or what's happening - just enjoy the way it unfolds.

What an imaginative & funny story. A kind of cross between Monty Python and The Twilight Zone. Well read & acted. I wished it was longer.

A genuinely funny and odd novel, that may have been dampened/spoiled by O'Brien's note at the end, which gives away the ending and kills the suspense of the last 30 pages. DO NOT FLIP TO THE END OF THE BOOK! I like reading all the notes at the end of these fancy editions, but usually they don't contain spoilers.

A hilariously metaphysical comedy riffing on the nature of subjectivity and the everything-goes world of atomic relativity. O'Brien applies this weird version of Reality in a good satire of society---the police continually trying to 'control' the world, even when it is only themselves causing the chaos.

The end of the book did lag, but overall a very good read.

I had to stop reading because I could not wrap my mind around this book. I feel like a terrible failure, especially when I see how excited everyone else seems to be.

A surreal experience, this: as if Spike Milligan and Franz Kafka drafted an Alice in Wonderland for grownups, then handed it off to PKD and M Night Shyamalan for rewrites. The absurdist Irish whimsy humour and running gag about bicycles will either tickle you or they won't. There are a couple of genuinely creepy scenes (one near the start and one near the end), and a twist that will perhaps only partially satisfy a rationalist's desire to have the preceding events explained...

My book club did it one month and most people didn't really like it. I loved it but it's not everyone's cup of tea.

In and out, in and out the window. Flann O'Brien weaves his surreal reality complete with bogus footnotes concerning the lunatic ramblings of a bird brained ontologist, people who turn into bicycles through prolonged contact, and bicycles who turn into people, a general obsession with bicycles, 2D police stations, a legion of one-legged vigilantes, miniature boxes whose contents drive one to madness, a murderer who may or may not meet the man he has murdered. Thoroughly insane, deeply darkly hilarious, this book is a must for readers who like their drollery tinged with nightmare, or conversely, like their nightmares tinged with drollery. If you think Poe and Dostoevsky are overlooked as humorist, you will probably think O'Brien is a scream. Though he is often compared to his compatriot and contemporary, Joyce, I see little likeness except for a taste for the random and absurd.