Prestige Drama
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“Séamas O’Reilly has created a vast mosaic of voices, each sparkling with heartache and wit. I’m in love with every character in this novel, and like most prestige dramas, it ended far too soon.” —Caroline O'Donoghue, author of The Rachel Incident
A dazzling novel about a community where an upcoming film production brings their past into sharp focus—and nobody’s version is the same.
In Derry, the locals are already in a twist about the arrival of Hollywood actress Monica Logue to research her role for a show about the Troubles—and then she goes missing. Everyone has a story to tell—about Monica’s possible whereabouts, and about the historic events that brought her here in the first place: the show’s screenwriter, desperate for this last shot at success; the grieving mother whose story he’s adapting; the ex-IRA member who knows the price of survival; the local psychic who’s seen too much ...
Prestige Drama brings to life a chorus of characters as they locate themselves in Monica's disappearance, and in the truth about their own history. From the author of the acclaimed memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?, Prestige Drama is heartbreaking, hilarious, and profound, an indelible portrait of a community both obsessed with its past, and desperate to forget it.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In this sharp, multifaceted novel, Northern Irish author Séamas O’Reilly examines what happens when a city’s pain gets turned into content. All the locals have an opinion when a big Hollywood production rolls into Derry to make a glossy drama series about the Troubles. And when lead actress Monica Logue disappears, suddenly everyone has a fresh mystery to talk about—along with all the older ones that never really got solved. O’Reilly uses a feisty chorus of local voices to tell this story, from the local-lad screenwriter to the people whose lives were shaped by their hometown’s tragic history. They, not the industry folk, are the real focus, and their vivid, dialect-heavy monologues range from laugh-out-loud neighborhood gossip to home truths about how to survive hard times. These shifting perspectives build Prestige Drama into something much richer than the comic mystery it appears to be on the surface.
