The Water Star - Hardcover

Casey, Philip

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0330371908 ISBN 13: 9780330371902

Publisher: Picador, 1999

Synopsis

This novel is about families and love in the English and Irish communities in 1950s London.

About this title

Review

Casey is a poet and a playwright; he has a poet's delicate ear and a playwright's eye for direction . The tale that unfolds in this thick, satisfying volume is not particularly complex - any more than the circumstances of any of our lives are complex, which is to say, infinitely and infinitesimally so. Through the interweaving and the overlapping of these relationships, Casey examines how human nature is shaped by sorrow; how people will find a way - sometimes, it seems, despite themselves - to take comfort from others, to make homes where they can, even among the ruins. - Erica Wagner, The Times. Philip Casey's second novel, The Water Star, confronts the central Irish experience of the twentieth century: exile. It is distinguished by the finely wrought lyricism that has characterised much of his poetry. His first novel, The Fabulists (1994) won acclaim; his new one confirms that he is a writer with a gift for uncovering the tortuous impulses of his characters with a lucid and affecting eye. Set in a post-war London still recovering from the Blitz, the novel follows the overlapping lives of five characters who inhabit the ruins of North London The Water Star is a bitter-sweet testimony to the never-ending struggle between exile and assimilation. - John Tague, Times Literary Supplement. No one should read this book in search of lapidary sentences or shock tactics. Instead, the peculiarly quiet power of its tale should be enjoyed at the leisurely pace demanded by its length. It is perhaps a good thing to be sometimes driven to a blurbish cliché: The Water Star is, somehow, haunting. - John Kenny, The Irish Times. Philip Casey has recreated a whole era of Irish life in this amazing novel. ... If you want to find out what it was like for the Irish in London in the early '50s, read this book. It is a treat. - Pat Byrne, The Irish World, 26 May 2000 This elegiac novel casts a gentle - but discerning - eye on the lives and loves of Irish and other exiles in a London shattered by the Blitz. Philip Casey brings the lyricism of a poet and the dramatic sense of a playwright to his tale of lost souls doing their best to glue their fragmented lives back together; his characters are vivid, subtly shaded, often tragic, but there's no wallowing in misery here - on the contrary, a life-affirming tenacity and humour, reinforced by an elegant cyclical structure and more than a hint of mysticism, makes The Water Star a pleasure to read. The final sequence, set in Ireland, chimes a little uncomfortably with the rest, but then comfort was never going to be a top priority in a book about alienation. An intelligent, memorable, moving novel. - Arminta Wallace, The Irish Times, Saturday April 1st, 2000 The lives of these characters become totally absorbing as different versions of important events are related from their respective viewpoints. Casey has brought alive the dilemmas of a lost generation and made them vivid and memorable. -The Good Book Guide The Water Star is a compelling series of life stories at a crucial point in modern history; it is equally compelling as an imaginative analysis of national versus private identity, of how people may transcend the bogus boundaries of their lives through small acts of honesty and kindness. - Sharon Barnes, IMAGE The Water Star is a powerful work of fiction, at once passionate and compassionate. - Waterstones Philip Casey is one of our most intuitive and interesting writers. ...This is a lyrical and captivating read in which the dead are as present as those survivors rebuilding their lives and the mental scars of inexpressible wounds find expression in moments of exquisite tenderness ... - Dermot Bolger, The Sunday Independent

About the Author

I was born in London in 1950 to Irish parents from Co Laois and Co Sligo. The north London of the 1950s was an enchanting, if in retrospect dangerous, playground for children, and I frequently escaped the confines of the family house to play in the bomb-sites in Highgate. This experience was the germ of my novel The Water Star. In 1956 the family settled in Ireland near Wexford town, but moved a few years later to Hollyfort in north Wexford. This picturesque landscape, featuring Croghan mountain and Annagh Hill, and the Bann River, features in the three novels which make up The Bann River Trilogy. Apart from three years in Barcelona in the mid-seventies, I've lived in Dublin since 1971, where I have been a full time poet and novelist since 1979. My next work, due in 2018, will be non-fiction, provisionally entitled 'Histories of The Irish.'

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0330371908
• ISBN 13: 9780330371902
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432