Birchwood (Vintage International)
Publisher: Vintage
Published: May 8, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 176
ISBN-13: 9780307279125
Subjects: Irish Novel And Short Story; Fiction; Nonfiction; Literary; Fiction / Literary
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.