Lying with the Dead
A Novel
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In this novel, Greek tragedy meets a dysfunctional family from Maryland, revealing how time and place matter little when it comes to the implacable logic of the darkest human emotions.
A family matriarch—half Medea, half Clytemnestra—calls home her three children, who take turns narrating the story. Quinn, the wonder boy who has become a successful actor in London, must fly in from England, putting a new love interest and a career-boosting role in a BBC production of the Oresteia on hold. Maury, whose life is defined by his Asperger's and a terrible crime committed when he was a teenager, rides in on a bus from his quiet, impoverished life out west. Candy, the eldest at fifty-five and the only one still a devout Catholic, is already in Maryland, where she takes care of her mother and dreams of retiring to North Carolina with her boyfriend. Once the family is reassembled in the childhood home, the pieces of a dark puzzle come together over brilliant and witty exchanges. Mewshaw invites us into the heart of a family dynamic, exploding prejudices about love, religion, and murder.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mewshaw (Year of the Gun) tackles a dysfunctional Irish-American family in an emotional novel narrated by the three adult children: 60-year-old Candy, who reluctantly cares for their manipulative and gravely ill mother; the Asperger's-afflicted former convict, Maury, who went to jail at 13 for killing their father; and the successful, London-based actor Quinn. As they are called to mom's bedside, the nonlinear story travels back to the origins of this "radioactive" family, dredging up dark secrets. Candy, who contracted polio as a child and endured her mother's physical and verbal abuse, wants to marry and move to North Carolina. Maury is dealing with Asperger's syndrome, which renders him intolerant of people touching him; and Quinn, despite his success, is haunted by his familial past. The three jaded yet sympathetic voices of the siblings are darkly expressive, supplying unnerving comic moments and unexpected twists. Mewshaw waxes poetic throughout while keeping the story moving forward to its shocking conclusion.
