The Slowworm's Song
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4.8 • 8 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A Best Book Of 2022 (New Yorker)
A Best Book Of Fall 2022 (Wall Street Journal)
From Costa Award-winning and Booker Prize-shortlisted author Andrew Miller comes a tender tale of guilt, trust, and a father's yearning to atone.
A harmless-looking letter drops onto the doormat in Stephen Rose's Somerset home like an unexploded bomb. It is a summons to an inquiry in Belfast, asking him to give testimony about his participation in a disastrous event during the Troubles–one he has long worked to forget.
An ailing ex-soldier and recovering alcoholic, Stephen has just begun to build a fragile bond with Maggie, the adult daughter he barely knows. For two years, he has worked hard to earn her trust, but the tragedy of what occurred back in the summer of 1982 has the power to destroy their new relationship. To buy time, he decides to write her an account of his life. Part explanation, part confession, it is also a love letter to Maggie.
When the moment comes that he must face what happened in Belfast that summer, the consequences are devastating––but ultimately liberating. Giving voice to those little heard in the literature of the Irish Troubles, The Slowworm’s Song is an unforgettable story about a man who learns that the only way back from the underworld is up.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this meditative if diffuse offering from Miller (Pure), the past comes calling for an ex-soldier whose actions 30 years earlier during the Troubles continue to weigh on him. As a young British infantryman patrolling Belfast in 1982, Stephen Rose was involved in a fatal incident, the specifics of which are murky. Now, a recovering alcoholic working at a plant store in Somerset, he receives a letter requesting he travel to Belfast and give an account of the tragedy for an impartial body known as the "Commission." As he decides whether to comply, he composes a long letter to his estranged, 20-something daughter, Maggie, hoping to reconnect. "If one day you were to look at me as some of the people in that room in Belfast would look at me. Could I survive it?" he asks. The narrative tentatively circles around what happened in 1982, as Stephen recounts being raised by a pacifist father, training for combat, and, in the novel's slackest sections, drying out in rehab centers. The dramatic highlights do not exert quite enough pull to sustain the novel's tension; as Stephen himself reflects, "I'd say it's a fine line between telling old stories and just banging on about the what-was." There's a lot driving this affecting exploration of truth and reconciliation, but it doesn't quite hang together.
Customer Reviews
Stream of Consciousness?
Beautifully written. Hmm. Makes me wonder why I’m not this reflective over details of my relationships with loved ones and my life’s trials. Ah, but we are this reflective at times; however we usually don’t put it all in one letter.