From Publishers Weekly
Repression and fear of the outside world mark the characters of Irish writer Deane's (Flightlines) gloomy third novel, in which he uses a character with lupus to explore the metaphoric, psychological and social paradoxes of this debilitating disease. In western Ireland, in the xenophobic atmosphere of the 1940s, Patty O'Higgins is born in a van at the side of the road. Her father reads Poe at her christening, and from this beginning, Patty's life only gets more difficult. As she comes of age, she develops a progressive and at-first unnamable illness whose onset parallels that of the mysterious disappearance and murder of sheep on the local mountain. Moreover, Patty's face becomes increasingly distorted into wolflike features. Given that some of the superstitious villagers still believe in banshees, it's not long before the more lycanthropic-minded start spinning tales: the sheep are being killed not just by ordinary wolves--in a country that hasn't had wolves in centuries--but rather by werewolves. Their rampant paranoia increasingly focuses on Patty. Deane neatly captures both the claustrophobic and comforting essences of village life, and his compact, supple prose has a poetic resonance (he won the O'Shaughnessy Prize for Irish Poetry in 1998). While ack
Join Amazon Prime and ship Two-Day for free and Overnight for $3.99. Already a member? Sign in.