Hardback: County Derry, Ireland. Summer, 1974.
Problem: Loneliness.
Jamie McCloone's early years in a grim, cruel orphanage have left him wary of people and anxious of change.
Now in his early forties, he has no dreams of changing his lonely life as a bachelor farmer until his kind-hearted neighbours, Patrick and Rose, tell him he is in need of a wife.
Lydia couldn't be more different to Jamie.
Rector's daughter and proper schoolteacher, she still lives at home, looking after her demanding mother.
She does dream of changing her spinsterly fate, but has no idea how - until a friend suggests putting an ad in the Lonely Hearts column of the Mid-Ulster Vindicator.
The result is a meeting of absolute opposites: farmer Jamie with his cavalier attitude to personal hygiene and Lydia Devine, for whom everything must be neat and in its proper place - including her ideal man.
The Misremembered Man (2008) is a beautifully rendered portrait of rural life which delights with its authentic characters and gentle humour. But the tears it evokes are not only tears of laughter. This vivid portrayal of the universal search for love brings with it a darker tale, for Jamie's search for love is truly a search for innocence and the childhood that was stolen from him.
In this exquisite tragi-comedy, Christina McKenna lays bare a sinister period of Ireland's history; one which many would prefer to leave hidden and safe from investigate eyes.
About the author: Christina McKenna grew up in County Derry, Northern Ireland. She attended the Belfast College of Art, gaining an honours degree in Fine Art, and studied postgraduate English at the University of Ulster. In 1986, she left Northern Ireland and spent ten years teaching both of these subjects abroad. She was, at the same time, pursuing a career as a painter. She mounted several exhibitions of her work - both as a solo artist and in group context - when abroad, but also on her return to Northern Ireland. She has written a memoir, published in 2004, titled My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress, and co-authored a book on exorcism, The Dark Sacrament (2006), with her writer husband, David M Kiely. She has also written a collection of true-life ghost stories set in the Ireland of the present day entitled Ireland's Haunted Women (2010).
The Misremembered Man is her first novel to be followed by a sequel, The Disenchanted Widow, in September 2013. She lives in Rostrevor, County Down.
Rating: 5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment