The Long Falling
By: Keith Ridgway.
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 305
Subjects: British -- Ireland -- Fiction; Mothers and sons -- Fiction; Culture conflict -- Fiction; Gay men -- Fiction; Ireland -- Fiction
Description: Grace Quinn is an Englishwoman who has lived her entire adult life in rural Ireland but is still an outsider. Isolated by religion and circumstance, she endures an abusive husband - who blames her for the death of their young son some twenty years earlier - and an increasingly estranged relationship with her surviving son, Martin, whose open homosexuality her husband refuses to accept.

Through a series of ill-fated events, Grace is emboldened to commit an act of desperation. Reeling in the aftermath, haunted by doubt and denial, she seeks out Martin in Dublin. There she is pursued by the police and an ambitious newspaper reporter. Confused about where to turn and whom to trust, she is cornered - and what unfolds is an uncompromising examination of the complex nature of love, fear, and betrayal.