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.
The Lapsed Protestant is the work of non-fiction.
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.
A topical novel about lost love, growing older and the realities of life in a society that is still coming to terms with thirty years of violence, some of that violence still very present and dangerous.
In the cold dawn of Christmas Day 1897, Gilbert Rice, 85-years-old and in failing health, recounts his journey into manhood in a city on the cusp of great change. Belfast in the 1830s was a city in flux. Industrialisation had led to an increase in population as workers flocked to the newly created jobs. Gilbert, a young man with prospects, begins work with the Ballast Office, supervising Belfast Port. But in the course of his days - and nights - abroad in the town, Gilbert becomes aware of tensions old and new. When he meets Maria, a Polish exile from Russian persecution, he is drawn into a love affair that will drive him to an act that could change his life, and the town's, for ever. The Mill for Grinding Old People Young is a brilliantly imaginative and moving historical novel. It evokes a vanished city that resonates powerfully with our contemporary anxieties.
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.
»Glenn Pattersons neuer Belfast-Roman liest sich wie ein Thriller.«_ Times Literary Supplement_Reverend Ken Averys Glaube an seine Fähigkeit, stets das Richtige zur richtigen Zeit zu tun, wird schwer erschüttert. In seiner Belfaster Kirche taucht ein Fremder auf, der behauptet, ein Attentat begangen zu haben. Er kann sich aber nicht richtig erinnern … Der lebenslustige presbyterianische Pfarrer Ken Avery führt ein erfülltes Leben inmitten seiner Gemeinde in Ost-Belfast. Eines Tages sucht ihn ein Mann namens Larry auf, der ihm anvertraut, er glaube sich langsam zu erinnern, in der Vergangenheit einen Mord begangen zu haben. Seinen Gedächtnisschwund erklärt er damit, dass nach der Tat sein Gedächtnis operativ manipuliert worden sei. Avery ist zunächst skeptisch, doch als die Indizien zunehmend dafür sprechen, dass Larrys Geschichte wahr ist, beginnt er der Sache ernsthaft nachzugehen. Seine Ermittlungen bringen sein Leben und das seiner Familie in Gefahr, seine Ehe wird auf die Zerreißprobe gestellt … Avery will ein Einzelschicksal aufklären, taucht aber letztendlich tief in die Traumata und Hoffnungen der von den »Troubles« geprägten nordirischen Gesellschaft ein. Glenn Patterson zeigt sich als scharfer Beobachter, seine Kriminalstory ist packend erzählt, selbstironisch und humorvoll. Ein Glanzstück.
