Strange Flowers
A Novel
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3.8 • 15 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARD NOVEL OF THE YEAR
Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Awards
“Mr. Ryan writes conspicuously beautiful prose… The fleeting happiness and abiding melancholy of the asymmetry, heightened by the intimately rendered surroundings, brings out Mr. Ryan’s most sensuous and emotive writing.” –The Wall Street Journal
From the Booker nominated author of The Queen of Dirt Island, Donal Ryan's new novel follows the Gladney family across three generations seeking the true meaning of what it is to find home and love.
In 1973, twenty-year-old Moll Gladney takes a morning bus from her rural home in Ireland and disappears. Bewildered and distraught, Paddy and Kit must confront an unbearable prospect: that they will never see their daughter again.
Five years later, Moll returns from London. What - and who - she brings with her will change the course of her family's life forever. Beautiful and devastating, this exploration of loss, alienation and the redemptive power of love reaffirms Donal Ryan as one of the most talented and empathetic writers at work today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ryan (From a Low and Quiet Sea) impresses with this gorgeous and meticulous multigenerational family saga. In the early 1970s, 20-year-old Moll Gladney disappears from her family's cottage in Knockagowny, Ireland, leaving behind her postman father, Paddy, and bookkeeping mother, Kit. Five years later, after no contact with her family, she returns just as unpredictably from England. Alex Elmwood, a Black Pentecostal Englishman, shows up shortly after, informing Moll's parents they are married and have an infant son named Josh, who can pass as white. Alexander slowly integrates into the community, joining a local hurling league and proving himself an excellent landscaper. Two decades later, Josh, now an aspiring writer, repeats his mother's sudden departure to London, becoming "not a missing person, more a person missed," as Ryan writes. He meets a young woman named Honey and shares a story he wrote about Jesus healing a blind man whose life subsequently crumbles into ruin. As Honey falls in love with Josh, she hides her connection to Alex's past, setting up the novel's surprising final act. Ryan's sentences have a gentle ramble, which, along with the story's subtle and oblique revelations, may test some readers' patience. Fans of Sebastian Barry and Anne Enright will love this delicate and lush portrait.
