Birchwood

John Banville

Language: English

Publisher: Random House, Inc.

Published: Jan 15, 2007

Description:

Review

“This is one of the most startling of the century's varied achievements in Irish writing.”
—Seamus Deane

"John Banville is one of the greatest masters of the English language.”
—_The Scotsman_

"_Birchwoo_d represents a watershed in contemporary Irish writing..”
—Colm Toibin

Product Description

An early classic from the Man Booker-prize winning author of The Sea.

I am therefore I think. So starts John Banville’s 1973 novel Birchwood, a novel that centers around Gabriel Godkin and his return to his dilapidated family estate. After years away, Gabriel returns to a house filled with memories and despair. Delving deep into family secrets—a cold father, a tortured mother, an insane grandmother—Gabriel also recalls his first encounters with love and loss. At once a novel of a family, of isolation, and of a blighted Ireland, Birchwood is a remarkable and complex story about the end of innocence for one boy and his country, told in the brilliantly styled prose of one of our most essential writers.