The Free and Easy - Softcover

Haverty, Anne

2.36

14 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099492954 ISBN 13: 9780099492955

Publisher: Vintage, 2007

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New Yorker Tom Blessman arrives in Dublin with a purpose - to spend money. His mega-rich great uncle is suffering a recurrent dream in which the old country - a place he would much rather forget - is beseeching him for help. Tom must put a stop to it by giving the Irish whatever it is they want.

But the young American finds an Ireland abuzz with glossy, happening people who apparently want for nothing. As he attempts to make sense of his mission - and resolve his own personal problems - he falls in with a lively crowd, all exploiting to the full this opportunistic new world.

Central to the scene is the sprawling Kinane family, especially Eileen, a lost soul whose waif-like beauty Tom pursues through the city's bars, art galleries and gatherings, finding himself in exciting but increasingly perilous territory...

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Review:

"Woven around a subtle reworking of a well-known literary archetype: the returned Yank...The Free and Easy gives a sardonic contemporary twist to this motif, [it] consistently entertains in its gentle mockery" (Liam Harte Irish Times)

"An acutely observed and perceptive portrait of the arriviste Irish...The writing, as admirers of Haverty would expect, is lucid and masterful. It captures the cynicism of a society for whom money is god without allowing that cynicism to corrupt its own integrity" (Justine McCarthy Irish Independent)

"A virtuoso performance...in turns hilarious, tender and acerbic" (Marcella Edwards Literary Review)

"Haverty's entertaining satire paints a vibrant picture of 21st Century Ireland" (Anthony Gardener Mail on Sunday)

"Haverty is one of our most interesting novelists, with an admirable chameleon quality evident in her books... Has an acutely observant eye... Her prose is stylish and possessed of a wicked humour" (Sunday Tribune)

From the Publisher:

The novel we have all been waiting for from Anne Haverty (author of the much loved One Day as a Tiger) - a delightfully quirky, witty satire of the 'New Ireland' through the eyes of a bewildered American adrift in Dublin

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