A Clock Without Hands
A Novel
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- ¥710
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- ¥710
発行者による作品情報
“I want to turn back the hands on the clock and change it all, make it different; three friends who meet up by chance in an old city and share a beer and laugh at old stories and jokes. But it wasn’t like that; and the clock has no hands, so I can’t turn them back.” [p.171]
Alex Carlise has returned to a place he thought he’d never see again, outside of his dreams. As he walks the ochre-dusted road to the house in which he grew up, the memories of his young life in a small Italian town push all other thoughts out of his head: thoughts about the major exhibition of his artwork opening soon in London, thoughts of the myriad things he should be doing in preparation–everything subsides to make room for the warm flood of a time long past.
When he opens the door to the now-deserted house, he is suddenly seven again. There is Jamie, his first friend, his best friend; Anna, his first love; and the delicious days they spent exploring the valley and swimming in the cerulean blue Mediterranean Sea. It all comes back to Alex in a way he can neither control nor discern. But the memories are insistent, demanding. Soon Alex loses entire hours to the past, overwhelmed by the haunting memories of a youth turned tragic.
Alex remembers the day he, Jamie, and Anna went to their favorite place, an abandoned church far up in the hills. There they stumbled upon a man, injured and sick. From this discovery, a series of events tumbled forth that would change them all forever. Alex now realizes that he must confront the truth about himself, about the echoes of the past that still haunt him, and about the friends whose legacy has meant only devastation.
Guy Burt’s vision of youth is piercingly accurate, and his sense of how time can play tricks on the mind is startling. Haunting, eerie, and remarkably assured, The Clock Without Hands will resonate with the child that hides inside your own memories.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A heart full of sorrow beats at the center of this brooding novel, Burt's third (following The Hole and Sophie), about English painter Alex Carlisle, who is struggling to come to terms with the tragic fallout of a childhood adventure. The bulk of the novel takes place during the summer when dreamy, "slow" Alex is eight and living with his expatriate family in Altesa, Italy. He; his best friend, Jamie; and Jamie's headstrong cousin, Anna, find a man with a gunshot wound to his leg and nurse him back to health, though they gradually come to suspect that he's a dangerous terrorist. Eventually, the three go their separate ways Jamie to an English boarding school, followed later by Alex, and Anna back to her family's home in northern Italy. In school, Alex turns to art, painting eerie pictures of the fateful summer, and Jamie slowly lets Alex in on his new, semisecret life as a jazz saxophonist, though his feelings for his friend are complicated and painful. It is Anna, however, who is most altered by their contact with the wounded man, and it's she who propels the novel toward its tragic conclusion. A heavy cloud of portentousness hangs over Burt's story, but despite its self-consciousness, this is an intriguing, involving read.
