Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty (English) Paperback Book

Description: Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty Returning to Belfast after a long absense, to attend her father`s funeral. This is a novel, about coming to terms with the past and the healing power of music, GRACE NOTES is a master story-teller`s triumphant return to the long form: a powerful lyrical novel of great distinction. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Returning to Belfast after a long absense, to attend her father`s funeral. Catherine McKenna-a young composer-remembers exactly why she left- the claustrophobic intimacies of the Catholic enclave, her fastidious, nagging mother, and the pervading tensions of a city at war with itself. She remembers a more innocent time, when the Loyalists Lambeg drums sounded mysterious and exciting; she remembers her shattered relationship with the drunken, violent Dave, she remembers the child she had with him, waiting back in Glasgow. This is a novel, about coming to terms with the past and the healing power of music, GRACE NOTES is a master story-teller`s triumphant return to the long form- a powerful lyrical novel of great distinction. Notes Vintage paperback edition of MacLavertys highly acclaimed Booker-shortlisted novel, which delicately and skilfully explores a variety of themes as it follows a young woman in the throes of post-natal depression as she returns to a provincial Ulster town for her fathers funeral. A novel of great distinction, from a master story-teller. "A master of haunted realism. His best novel yet" The Observer Author Biography Bernard MacLaverty lives in Glasgow. He has written five previous collections of stories and five novels, including Grace Notes, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Midwinter Break, the Bord Gais Energy Irish Novel of the Year. He has written versions of his fiction for other media - radio and television plays, screenplays and libretti. Kirkus US Review A lyric novel about music and motherhood. Catherine McKenna is an Irish-born pianist and composer whose emotional turbulence sets the tone for a significant part of the storys soft yet visceral verbal music. Catherines unusually delicate sense of psychic balance is thrown off by two events in particular: the birth of her first child, Anna, and the sudden death of her estranged yet beloved father. Catherine is not married; her mate is a (mostly) lovable drunkard. As an iconoclastic only child who left her familys home in a small town near Belfast for a university education and career in Scotland, the adult Catherine rarely visits or phones her disappointed parents. Her musical career, though, is flourishing, with the BBC broadcasting her work and commissions coming her way at last. Using flashbacks, interior monologues, and dialogue, MacLaverty very gradually creates a complex, dimensional character, until the third-person narrative seems to speak directly to us from Catherines struggling soul: "It gave Catherine a strange feeling, this invisible cascade of darkness. She felt suffocated by it quilting downwards - whatever it was. This diminuendo of light brought about by something intangible - odourless - invisible." The drawback of MacLavertys mildly impressionistic approach is the slow, even anticlimactic pace of some scenes, those portraying the domesticity of Catherines relatively cloistered life, for example, or those, especially, involving her fathers death, which open the story. Catherines character, as it emerges from the fragmentary narrative, tends to overshadow everyone else in a novel guided less by "story" than by musical tides and perturbations. Its clear that MacLaverty (Walking the Dog, 1995, etc.) has tried to do something rather difficult: to suggest the interior life of an artist struggling to balance the urgent demands of creating music and the equally pressing demands of life. Very often, he succeeds in this complex portrait of a woman who is, first and foremost, an artist. (Kirkus Reviews) Prizes Short-listed for Booker Prize for Fiction 1997 Short-listed for Whitbread Book Awards: Novel Category 1997 Details ISBN0099778017 Author Bernard MacLaverty Pages 288 Year 1998 ISBN-10 0099778017 ISBN-13 9780099778011 Format Paperback Imprint Vintage Place of Publication London Country of Publication United Kingdom DEWEY 823.914 Birth 1942 Media Book Short Title GRACE NOTES Language English Publisher Vintage Publishing UK Release Date 1998-04-30 Publication Date 1998-04-30 AU Release Date 1998-04-30 NZ Release Date 1998-04-30 Alternative 9781409017189 Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:1124252;

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