When Drew Linden's new job brings him back to his native Belfast, he is determined to remain distant from everything that once tied him there, including his friends and family. But as three of generation of family history unfold, it becomes clear that the past Drew has been running from is the very thing he needs to face.
Contents:Twenty-nine Palms by Mary O'DonnellA Drive by Philip MacCannThe Lip by Roddy DoyleSigns by Ursula de BrunThe Girl in the Yellow Dress by Patrick QuigleyTo Prevent Rust, Weeping and Bleeding by Sara BerkeleyWax by Jennifer C. CornellCharlie Chaplin's Wishbone by Aidan MathewsFather's Music by Dermot BolgerLosing Claire by Molly McCloskeyBag of Jewellery by Philip DavidsonRoaches by Glenn PattersonStart of a Great Adventure by Ciaran FolanThe Long Drop by Evelyn ConlonA Legacy and Some Gunks--An Entirely True Story by Bernard MacLavertyThe Family Plot by Brian LeydenThe Hands of Dingo Deery by Patrick McCabeThe Milking Bucket by Vincent McDonnellOur Fenian Dead by Lucille RedmondIn the Vatican Museum by Tom PhelanAfternoon by Desmond HoganGrow a Mermaid by Marina CarrThe Terms by Mike McCormack
A pair of novellas, set over two pivotal summers in the lives of two young men from Belfast, recall the constraints of the place where they were born and the times in which they are living. Summer on the Road It's 1980 and in the last summer before his A levels Mark lands a job he didn't even know he had applied for, sweeping streets for Belfast City Council. Called 'binman' by his schoolfriends, 'snooty' by his workmates, he can't imagine anything less like a holiday. Day by day, though, navigating bomb scares, punishing hangovers, broken television sets and a loving but chaotic home life, he begins to glimpse a path all his own, even if he can't see yet where exactly it is going to lead. Last Summer of the Shangri-Las Three years earlier Gem has driven his mother to the brink. She packs him off to stay with his aunt in New York during the infernal heat of the summer of 1977. It's the summer too of disco, of punk, the summer of Sam, and Elvis dead on the bathroom floor. For Gem though it will forever after be the summer he met Vivien - as rooted in the city as he is adrift; the summer he stumbled on Mary, Liz and Margie, three-quarters of the greatest New York group of all (and they'd fight anyone who said otherwise); the summer he learned how to go home. Capturing the innocence of adolescent boys, their passion, confusion and yearning, Two Summers is for anyone who has ever been young.
It is the summer of 1969 and ten-year-old Mal is finding it difficult to settle in his new home, a housing estate on the outskirts of Belfast. He befriends a brash and rebellious teenager, Francy, who revels in his own status as an outsider and has set up camp in the local dump. But this is no ordinary summer - the civil rights marches are beginning, and the simmering sectarian tensions of the Larkview estate are set to erupt, hastening Mal's painful, shocking, loss of innocence. "One of the great novels about Ulster at the start of its Troubles." - Carlo Gebler "Remarkable assured...Patterson's novel, needless to say, is neither afraid nor prejudiced, but courageously magnanimous." - Guardian "A novel of visionary power that sees through a child's eyes a Belfast about to explode into sectarian strife." - Sunday Tribune "This is a very good novel and deserves your immediate attention." - Books Ireland
The Lapsed Protestant is the work of non-fiction.
Avery isn't everyone's idea of a model Presbyterian minister. A Velvet Underground fan and student of stand-up comedy, the former bank-worker can't quite get used to being ?Reverend?. Then there's his difficulty remembering biblical quotations . . .Despite all this, Avery has absolute faith in his ability always to know the right thing to do. Until, that is, a man appears in his east Belfast church and confesses to murder. The only problem is ? this man can't remember where, when or why he killed. Avery commits himself to finding out the truth of what happened, but if this stranger seems hampered by the limitations of his own memory, then the minister's hands are tied by his professional and personal responsibilities ? and, as Avery soon realizes, neglecting his own concerns could have disastrous consequences .
A view of the south of Ireland - political, social, geographical - through the eyes of a liberal northern protestant being asked to rejoin it.
A witty and impassioned book on Ulster, which has been thrust into the centre of British and European politics and which is likely to become Britain's frontier with the wider world.
Number 5 is a 3-bedroom terrace house in suburban Belfast, where successive occupants navigate their joys and struggles amid the changing seasons outside. The memories of previous residents linger, shaping the house's atmosphere as they cope with life's challenges.
Hailed by Anne Enright as 'the best book about The Troubles ever written', this novel by Glenn Patterson - the Bafta-nominated writer behind the Good Vibrations film - spans three decades of Belfast history and is regarded by many as one of the finest Ulster novels ever written.
