A crime novel in which four members of one family are shot dead one Valentine's Day by their housekeeper, who is arrested for the crime two weeks later, but the tragedy neither begins nor ends there. From the author of THE REASON WHY, SIMISOLA and THE SPEAKER OF MANDARIN.

A judgement in stone

Literature & Fiction

RUTH RENDELL

Contemporary

London, Hutchinson (1977)

James Plunkett's long-awaited second novel is, like his widely acclaimed Strwnpet City, a rich and intricate tapestry of Irish life, this time of the period from the 1914 war to the ending of World : War II. Like many other great novels it Is basically about growing up. We watch Tim McDonagh : and his two close friends moving through childhood and adolescence to early manhood, adapting each in his own-way to the varied and complex strands of the Irish heritage. A powerful influence, of course, is the Church, But there is. also the strong blood-myth of race and an equally pervasive nostalgia for a lost, golden age of the Gael, that mysterious groping back to a crowded, mythological world of gods, warriors and hero-poets. There are, too, , the passionate antagonisms of the Civil War .which had so. recently marked the setting-up of the new State and turned the triumph of the uprising to dust and ashes. Rich and highly articulate characters personify . these influences - O'Sheehan, the eccentric old librarian and Celtic scholar who believes he is Oisin, - son of Finn, MacCumhaill and hero-poet of Gaelic mythology and so about 2,000 years old Cornelius Moloney publican-politician, who hopes to make his fortune by training, greyhounds; and petty politicians and feuding Treatyites and Anti-Treatyites who were at one time brothers-in-arms.

Farewell companions

Plunkett, James

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Books by London, Hutchinson (1977)

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A judgement in stone

Farewell companions