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Story of a Girl

Story of a Girl

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Author: Tom Mac Intyre
€17,00 EUR
€17,00 EUR
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The girl of this story is a clairvoyant. To the other children in the local National School, she is an ‘imbissil’, a creature of the margins. But she is a lightning-conductor for all that happens in one small Irish country town and through her are channeled all the dreams and desires of its exuberant inhabitants.

The girl’s grandmother, lives in a beech tree, ‘screeching, singing … fragments constantly spilling out of her memory-box’; Vera McGettrick’s fiance blows his head off a week before their wedding; Liz Duffy, the ‘apostate’ who marries a protestant (‘the other crowd’), is denounced as a ‘slut, whore and rip’; and the lovelorn ghost of Dockery the draper, is ‘still to be seen fishing on winter evenings’.

Potently charged with historical echoes, eroticism, literary allusion and wild humour, Story of a Girl takes the reader on a rollercoaster voyage into a kaleidoscopic world of pure, unfettered language. Here, lyrical English, visions, snatches of song and bursts of Irish combine to harness the very pulse of life, engaging the reader’s attention on every shimmering page.

Details

ISBN: 9781843510147

Extent: 180

Published:

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Praise and Reviews

  • ‘Story of a Girl is a lyrical journey through an Ireland of another time. As you might expect from a writer of Mac Intyre’s stature the prose here flows naturally with a delicious, almost poetic, rhythm, that sweeps the reader along with ease. English jostles with snatches of French, Irish and Latin in a highly sophisticated yet eminently readable, almost sensual, manner. You’re in the hands of a master.’ – Mary Conroy, Ireland on Sunday

  • ‘Tom Mac Intyre’s wildly eloquent novel reads at times like Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood re-written by someone who has spent years reading Finnegan’s Wake. Here we are offered one voice that is unmistakably Irish and the accent is definitely Mac Intyre’s.’ Tome Widger, Sunday Tribune

  • ‘The writer was a man of his time, who leaves an enduring legacy of daring work.’ – Carol Hunt, The Independent

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About the Author

Tom Mac Intyre, born in Cavan in 1931, is the author of many works of fiction, poetry and plays, includingStories of the Wandering Moon(2000), The Great HungerandThe Gallant John-Joe(2002).

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Image: Bryan O'Brien