Search results for ""author billy o'callaghan""

**A BOOK OF 2023 IN IRISH TIMES, RTÉ GUIDE AND SUNDAY INDEPENDENT**An unforgettable and sweeping interwar love story, from the Costa-shortlisted and bestselling Irish author of Life Sentences''Gorgeous'' SARA BAUME''His most ambitious work to date'' JOHN BANVILLE''A beautiful, layered novel'' ELAINE FEENEY1980s Cork. Jack Shine discovers a shoe box full of love letters in his mother''s belongings. Rebekah came to Cork alone as a young Jewish refugee from Vienna when the Second World War broke out. She died soon after, and Jack never learned of his father''s identity. Why did she keep newspaper clippings about a famous footballer player? Who was ''The Paper Man''?As Jack uncovers his mother''s life, he is transported to 1930s Vienna, a bustling city on the brink of war. At the heart of the action is Matthias Sindelar, one of the most famous footballers in the world, known as ''The P

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The breathtaking short story collection from the Costa-shortlisted Irish writerThree gunshots on the Irish border define the course of a young man's life; a writer clings fast to a star-crossed affair with a woman who has never been fully in his reach; a fisherman accustomed to hard labour rolls up his sleeves to dig a grave for his child; a pair of newly-weds embark on their first adventure, living wild on the deserted Beginish Island. Spanning a century and two continents - from the muddy fields of Ireland to a hotel room in Paris, a dingy bar in Segovia to an aeroplane bound for Taipei - these densely layered tales reveal the quiet heroism and gentle dignity of ordinary life. Ranging from the elegiac to the brutally confrontational, Billy O'Callaghan's stories explore the resilience of the human heart and its ability to keep beating even in the wake of grief, trauma and lost love.'The best fiction I have read this year... Taut, subtle and moving, and brought off beautifully' John Banville, Best Books of 2020, Irish Times

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An unforgettable and sweeping interwar love story, from the Costa-shortlisted and bestselling Irish author of Life Sentences'Imaginative, beautifully told... Superb'SPECTATOR'The best book yet by a truly gifted Irish writer'GABRIEL BYRNE, author of Walking with Ghosts1980s Cork. Jack Shine discovers a shoe box full of love letters in his mother's belongings. Rebekah came to Cork alone as a young Jewish refugee from Vienna when the Second World War broke out. She died soon after, and Jack never learned of his father's identity. Why did she keep newspaper clippings about a famous footballer player? Who was 'The Paper Man'?As Jack uncovers his mother's life, he is transported to 1930s Vienna, a bustling city on the brink of war. At the heart of the action is Matthias Sindelar, one of the most famous footballers in the world, known as 'The Paper Man' because of his effortless weave across the pitch. When Sindelar unexpectedly meets Rebekah, both of their lives are changed forever. As war looms, they must accept that their survival will tear them apart.Based on true events, The Paper Man is the story of twentieth-century Europe and love against the odds. It is a story that will take Jack far from Cork and all the way back to Vienna, and towards The Paper Man.

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*THE #3 IRISH BESTSELLER*'Momentous and epic' BERNARD MACLAVERTY'Superb and moving' JOHN BANVILLE'A lovely, piercing book' SEBASTIAN BARRYThree generations. More than a century of famine, war, violence and love. At sixteen Nancy, the only member of her family to survive the Great Famine, leaves her small island for the mainland. Finding work in a grand house on the edge of Cork City, she feels irrepressibly drawn to the charismatic gardener Michael Egan, sparking a love affair that soon throws her into a fight for her life. In 1920, Nancy's son Jer has lived through battles of his own as a soldier in the Great War. Now drunk in a jail cell, he struggles to piece together where he has come from, and who he wants to be. And in the early 1980s, Jer's youngest child Nellie is nearing the end of her life in a council house, moments away from her childhood home; remembering the night when she and her family stole back something that was rightfully theirs, she imagines what lies in store for those who will survive her.'Brilliantly immerses us in its respective time periods' SUNDAY TIMES

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'A poignant, piercing meditation on middle age and the passing of time… will linger with you long after the book is closed' Guardian *SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENCORE AWARD 2020*On a bitterly cold winter’s afternoon, Michael and Caitlin escape their unhappy marriages to keep an illicit rendezvous. Once a month, for the past quarter of a century, Coney Island has been their haven; these precious, hidden hours their only nourishment. But now, amid the howling of an angry snowstorm, the shut-down, out-of-season resort feels like the edge of the world. And their lives, suddenly, are on the brink – with news of serious illness on one side, and a move to the Midwest on the other.

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