Description

Book Synopsis

The provocative novel by ''one of the greatest writers of our era'' (Hilary Mantel) and ''the Irish novelist everyone should read'' (Colm Tóibín).

A writer of pornographic fiction, creates an ideal world of sex through his two stock athletes, Colonel Grimshaw and Mavis Carmichael, while he bungles every phase of his entanglement with an older woman who has the misfortune to fall in love with him. But his insensitivity to this love is in direct contrast to the tenderness with which he attempts to make his aunt''s slow death in hospital tolerable, while his employer, Maloney, failed poet and comic king of pornographers, comes gradually to preside over this broken world. Everywhere in this rich novel is the drama of opposites, but, above all, sex and death are never far from each other.

''Wise and compelling ... Elegiac and graceful.'' David Mitchell
''I have admired, even loved, John McGahern''s work since his first novel.'' Melvyn Bragg

The Pornographer

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    A Paperback / softback by John McGahern

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      Book details

      Publisher Faber & Faber
      Published 5 November 2009
      ISBN-13 9780571225712
      978-0571225712
      ISBN-10 0571225713
      Also in:
      Fiction Contemporary Fiction

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      The provocative novel by ''one of the greatest writers of our era'' (Hilary Mantel) and ''the Irish novelist everyone should read'' (Colm Tóibín).

      A writer of pornographic fiction, creates an ideal world of sex through his two stock athletes, Colonel Grimshaw and Mavis Carmichael, while he bungles every phase of his entanglement with an older woman who has the misfortune to fall in love with him. But his insensitivity to this love is in direct contrast to the tenderness with which he attempts to make his aunt''s slow death in hospital tolerable, while his employer, Maloney, failed poet and comic king of pornographers, comes gradually to preside over this broken world. Everywhere in this rich novel is the drama of opposites, but, above all, sex and death are never far from each other.

      ''Wise and compelling ... Elegiac and graceful.'' David Mitchell
      ''I have admired, even loved, John McGahern''s work since his first novel.'' Melvyn Bragg

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