Death and Nightingales
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
NOW A MAJOR BBC TV DRAMA SERIES
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY COLM TOIBIN
‘Poetic and compelling, with a heart-stopping plot twist, Death and Nightingales seems to me a perfect novel’ Hilary Mantel
'A miracle of a novel which combines prose of bleak, unadorned beauty with a plot that keeps you up all night wondering how it will end... a masterpiece' Colm Tóibín
It is 1883 and against the fearsome, unforgiving beauty of the Fermanagh landscape, the fate of Beth Winters unfolds.
Beth is determined to decide her own destiny but charmed by the roguish Liam Ward she seems doomed to repeat the tragic mistakes of her family’s past. Through the events of her twenty-fifth birthday, decades of pain and betrayal build to a devastating, deadly climax.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Originally published in England in 1992, McCabe's powerful, gruffly lyrical novel, released for the first time in America, chronicles the struggles of a spunky, courageous young Irish woman in strife-torn Northern Ireland in the 1880s. Beth Winters enters the world with a strike against her: her mother is Catholic and her father is Protestant. Pregnant at the age of 25, Beth thinks back on the wretched existence of her late mother, Catherine, who was constantly badgered by her violent husband, Billy. Though he could never forgive Catherine for a particularly galling act of betrayal, of which Beth is a constant reminder, Billy conceives a grudging love and admiration for Beth. In moments of weakness, his love takes an unpleasant turn, and Beth is driven toward Liam Ward, a young Catholic who hates Billy for his wealth and power. McCabe, equally adept at scenes of furious action and heated intimacy, never lets the reader forget the Catholic-Protestant violence lying beneath the surface, even in the brutal clashes between father and daughter. Beth herself is acutely aware of the contradictions of her birth and heritage. When she finally steals away after a vicious beating by her father, McCabe cleverly sets up the riveting climax of the book, in which Beth is revealed to be as ruthless as Billy. It is the relationship between father and daughter, charged with a bitterly affectionate love and shared cleverness, that drives this novel, a fine book that rarely blinks at the bitter truths of life, loss and war.