Neil Jordan The Past

Abacus Paperback from 1981. Please have a look at my other Items.
'A wonderful Irish novel a keen unsentimental meditation on how the window of the past opens up onto the present. Almost incidentally, the novel contains an arresting story beautifully told... an obsessive, tender annotation to a heartbreakingly thin family album.'

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Tugging the story of the past back towards his own birth, a man searches for the truth about his parentage. His grandmother was a flamboyantly bad actress at the Abbey Theatre married to a Free State hero and their beautiful daughter a model and actress. Through the reminiscences of his mother's friend, the pieces of the past begin to fit together into a delicate mosaic of the truth.

'A must... purity and poignancy. Edna O'Brien, OBSERVER

'A haunting experience.' DAILY TELEGRAPH

'The sureness of touch, in a fifth or sixth novel, would be stunning: here it is a knockout.' DUBLIN SUNDAY PRESS

'Whether recreating the frowsty faded provincialism of the Irish seaside resort, the murderous absurdities of the Troubles, or a world of theatre in which the personality continually becomes confused with the past, Mr Jordan demonstrates that he is one of the most original talents to emerge in the last decade.' SPECTATOR