The Blasphemer
SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD & A RICHARD & JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK
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3.7 • 11 Ratings
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD & A RICHARD & JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK
He had always been scared of flying. Now, the fear is real. A plane crash. The water is rising over his mouth. In his nostrils. Lungs. As Daniel gasps, he swallows; and punches at his seat-belt. Nancy, the woman he loves, is trapped in her seat. He clambers over her, pushing her face into the headrest.
It is a reflex, visceral action made without rational thought...
But Daniel Kennedy did it. And already we have judged him from the comfort of our own lives.
Almost a hundred years earlier, Daniel's great-grandfather goes over the top at Passchendaele.A shell explodes, and he wakes up alone and lost in the hell of no-man's-land. Where are the others? Has he been left behind?
And if he doesn't find his unit, is he a deserter?
Love; cowardice; trust; forgiveness.How will any of us behave when we are pushed to extremes?
'A great achievement...To take on the First World War as so very many have done and make it fresh is remarkable.' MELVYN BRAGG
'A book that won't leave your fingernails intact...a terrifically exciting and thought-provoking must-read' DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In British author Farndale's elegant meditation on morality (among many other topics), Daniel Kennedy, a biologist specializing in worms, is convinced that the universe is godless until the plane carrying him and his partner, Nancy, to the Galapagos Islands crashes in the ocean. In his desperate scramble to escape the sinking plane, he pushes Nancy out of the way, though he later returns to rescue her. While the primary plot concerns Daniel and Nancy's efforts to come to terms with their near-death experience, as well as Daniel's betrayal, which Nancy can neither forget nor forgive, this ambitious novel interweaves several other narratives, one involving Daniel's grandfather in WWI (the author brilliantly evokes trench warfare), and another focused on what may be an original manuscript of part of Mahler's "unfinished" symphony. A third subplot focuses on the couple's nine-year-old daughter and her music teacher, a Muslim, in London. Farndale (A Sympathetic Hanging) can be didactic, but he knows how to tell a terrific story.
