Grace
From the Booker Prize-winning author of Prophet Song
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2018
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION, THE WILLIAM SAROYAN INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR WRITING 2018 & FRANCE'S PRIX LITTÉRATURE MONDE (2019)
Winter is closing in and Ireland is in the grip of famine. Early one October morning, Grace's mother snatches her from sleep, brutally cuts her hair and tells her: ‘You are the strong one now.’
Her mother fits her up in men's clothes and casts her out, as she is no longer safe at home. With her younger brother Colly in tow, she sets off on a remarkable journey against the looming shadow of her country's darkest hour.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lynch's (Red Sky in Morning) wonderful third novel follows a teenage girl through impoverished Ireland at the height of the Great Famine. Grace Coyle is 14 in 1844, when her mother dresses her as a boy and sends her off to find work to save herself and her destitute family. Grace travels with her 12-year-old brother, Colly, south from Urris Hills. Before they reach Donegal, Colly dies, but his ghost continues to accompany Grace, alerting her to dangers that prove far more plentiful than food or employment. Mistaken for a hireling named Tim, Grace finds work on a cattle drive and a road-building project. She then ends up an itinerant drifter alongside one-armed John Bart. What John and Grace cannot earn, they steal; the ghost of a woman killed during a botched robbery also becomes Grace's traveling companion. Grace eventually makes her way to Limerick before heading home, persisting even when she loses the ability to speak. In Gaelic-lilted poetic prose, Lynch evokes nearly five years of misery: the Samhain (end-of-harvest festival) after flooding destroys the harvest, wintry deprivation, endless days on nameless roads, starvation, and desperation. Heart-wrenching images include Grace's pregnant mother dragging Grace to the killing stump to chop off her hair, Grace eating stolen seed potatoes, and much worse. Lynch's powerful, inventive language intensifies the poignancy of the woe that characterizes this world of have-nothings struggling to survive.
