When All Is Said
A Novel
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4.2 • 172 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER & INDIE NEXT PICK
"Griffin's stunning debut, brimming with irresistible Irish-isms, is an elegy to love, loss and the complexity of life." –People Magazine
One of Goodreads' 43 Most Anticipated Reads of 2019
“Beautiful. Intimate. Tearful. Aching and lyrical. So simply and beautifully told.” –Louise Penny, #1 New York Times bestselling author
"I'm here to remember–all that I have been and all that I will never be again."
If you had to pick five people to sum up your life, who would they be? If you were to raise a glass to each of them, what would you say? And what would you learn about yourself, when all is said?
At the bar of a grand hotel in a small Irish town sits 84-year-old Maurice Hannigan. He’s alone, as usual - though tonight is anything but. Pull up a stool and charge your glass, because Maurice is finally ready to tell his story.
Over the course of this evening, he will raise five toasts to the five people who have meant the most to him. Through these stories - of unspoken joy and regret, a secret tragedy kept hidden, a fierce love that never found its voice - the life of one man will be powerful and poignantly laid bare.
Beautifully heart-warming and powerfully felt, the voice of Maurice Hannigan will stay with you long after all is said and done.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Griffin's satisfactory debut takes place during one night in June 2014, at a hotel bar in a small Irish city. Talkative Maurice Hannigan, 84, has settled down for a long night of drinking, with each of his drinks raised to some absent loved one: his older brother, a stillborn daughter, his disturbed sister-in-law, his deceased wife, and his son, Kevin, who has moved to America to work and raise a family. Addressing that son in his mind throughout the novel, Maurice ranges back and forth through a life that began in poverty and ended with his buying up much of the county. Key to the story are Maurice's impulsive pocketing of a rare coin when he was a boy working in the manor that has now become the hotel where he is drinking, and the conflicts between Maurice's struggling family and the wealthy one that used to control life in their county. While the plot hinges heavily on coincidence, and the device of addressing an absent son feels extraneous, Maurice is a likable and complex character with a voice that readers will be drawn to. Maurice's humor, his keen observations on class and family, and his colloquial language, as well as Griffin's strong sense of place, create the feeling of a life connected to many others by strands of affection and hatred.
Customer Reviews
Unexpectedly lovely
I loved this book, unexpectedly! I love the way the author choose to tell the story, and that she gave the protagonist dignity to the end. Some aspects of the choices various characters make were not easily understood by me, but I also like that she didn't dumb it down to make it too nice and tidy. Some really lovely writing, and I hope she does more.