A novel that explores the effect of modern technology on the individual. It looks at the generation of the 1930s Nazis whose mantra was 'All You Need is Hate' and contrasts it with the 1960s 'All You Need is Love' of The Beatles. Magic Alex fifty years later in the 2000s sits in his Cell Phone cell in a mental hospital and contemplates the modern generation where there's so much communication there's no communication. Another DADA/Surrealist view of present day life.
Responses to Michael O'Leary's novel Magic Alex's Revenge
'Magic Alex's Revenge is a complex and often beguiling look at the 'Sixties' generation of peace and love and anti-materialism degenerated into the 'I, me, mine' selfishness sparked by the mid-eighties Rogernomics which continues into the 21st Century Schizoid Person, fuelled by technology and greed'.
Brian E. Turner, liner notes 2008
'Many people of Michael O'Leary's generation and later have tried to write a novel in what might be called a post-modernist way. It seems to me that O'Leary has made a success of this mode of fiction simply by working harder and longer than most people, 30 years at least on this book'.
Dr. F.W.N. Wright, at the launch of Magic Alex's Revenge