Items related to Grace Notes

MacLaverty, Bernard Grace Notes ISBN 13: 9780224044295

Grace Notes - Hardcover

 
9780224044295: Grace Notes
View all copies of this ISBN edition:
 
 
Returning to Belfast after a long absence, to attend her father's funeral, Catherine McKenna - a young composer - remembers exactly why she left; the claustrophobic intimacies of the Catholic enclave, her fastidious, nagging mother, and the pervading tensions of a city at war with itself. She remembers a more innocent time, when the Loyalists' Lambeg drums sounded mysterious and exciting; she remembers her shattered relationship with the drunken, violent Dave; she remembers the child she had with him, waiting back in Glasgow. A novel about coming to terms with the past, and the healing power of music, GRACE NOTES is a master story-teller's triumphant return to the long form: a powerful lyrical novel of great distinction.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:
Composer Catherine McKenna has more of a gift for music than happiness, but she has long since been driven beyond harmonies (musical and personal) that her Belfast family can comprehend. Bernard MacLaverty renders both sides of the equation: Catherine's feminist and aesthetic striving and her mother's more traditional grasp--it's hard not to sympathize with Mrs McKenna's impatient rejoinder, "You don't cope with music, you listen to it."

Grace Notes, MacLaverty's first novel since Cal, is as much about Irish identity-- and possibility--as it is about art. Catherine's newest piece, a mass, includes the huge drums Protestants play in parades. "It was a scary sound--like thunder. Like the town was under a canopy of dark noise." Though her fellow Catholics see the drums as instruments of threat, Catherine is determined to integrate them into her composition.

Her return to Belfast for her father's funeral brings back several ghosts, among them an influential professor who spoke of grace notes--"the notes between the notes". This novel is full of such instances, wry snatches of conversation and unforgettable observations: the new Chinese restaurant that has had to offer chips to stay in business, or the pub that's "on a slight hill. When dogs pissed at the door the dark lines ran diagonally to the gutter." These transcend the occasional passage in which MacLaverty tries too hard to see into the life and rhythms of a female artist. The final section, however, a live radio concert of Catherine's piece, is a triumph for both woman composer and male author.

From the Back Cover:

With superb artistry and startling intimacy, the celebrated Irish writer Bernard Mac Laverty brings us into the life of Catherine McKenna – estranged daughter, Vexed lover, new mother and a woman composer making her mark in a male-dominated field. On the remote island of Islay she struggles for her artistic life in the midst of a relationship gone dangerously wrong. In Glasgow she gives birth to a child – and receives a career-making BBC commission. And in her home town in Northern Ireland she returns to bury a difficult father, forge a tentative peace with her mother and confront the ghosts of a constricting past. Through it all she strives to maintain the habit of art, in the face of depression, privation and misunderstanding.

In 'Grace Notes' the music of Bernard Mac Laverty's prose and his harmonious vision of one woman's life combine to create work of great delicacy and tensile strength. Mac Laverty has written a compact and luminous masterpiece.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

  • PublisherJonathan Cape Ltd
  • Publication date1997
  • ISBN 10 022404429X
  • ISBN 13 9780224044295
  • BindingHardcover
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages288
  • Rating

Shipping: £ 24.17
From U.S.A. to United Kingdom

Destination, rates & speeds

Add to Basket

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780099778011: Grace Notes

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780099778011
Publisher: Vintage, 1998
Softcover

  • 9780393318418: Grace Notes: A Novel

    W. W. ..., 1998
    Softcover

  • 9780393045420: Grace Notes

    W W No..., 1997
    Hardcover

  • 9780753158647: Grace Notes

    Hardcover

  • 9780753162354: Grace Notes

    ISIS P..., 2000
    Softcover

Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace

Stock Image

Maclaverty, Bernard
Published by Random House UK (1997)
ISBN 10: 022404429X ISBN 13: 9780224044295
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Wizard Books
(Long Beach, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New. Seller Inventory # Wizard022404429X

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 44.13
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 24.17
From U.S.A. to United Kingdom
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Maclaverty, Bernard
Published by Random House UK (1997)
ISBN 10: 022404429X ISBN 13: 9780224044295
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
BennettBooksLtd
(LOS ANGELES, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 1.05. Seller Inventory # Q-022404429X

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 78.58
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 34.87
From U.S.A. to United Kingdom
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Maclaverty, Bernard
Published by Random House UK (1997)
ISBN 10: 022404429X ISBN 13: 9780224044295
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
BennettBooksLtd
(LOS ANGELES, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 1.05. Seller Inventory # Q-022404429x

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 78.58
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 34.87
From U.S.A. to United Kingdom
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Maclaverty, Bernard
Published by Random House UK (1997)
ISBN 10: 022404429X ISBN 13: 9780224044295
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
GoldenWavesOfBooks
(Fayetteville, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service. Seller Inventory # Holz_New_022404429X

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 102.12
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 22.19
From U.S.A. to United Kingdom
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Maclaverty, Bernard
Published by Random House UK (1997)
ISBN 10: 022404429X ISBN 13: 9780224044295
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
GoldBooks
(Austin, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. Seller Inventory # think022404429X

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 101.98
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 24.57
From U.S.A. to United Kingdom
Destination, rates & speeds