Skallagrigg - Hardcover

Horwood, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670801321 ISBN 13: 9780670801329

Publisher: Viking, 1987

Synopsis

It is 1927, and a seven yer old boy, committed to a sub normality hospital in Northern England as handicapped beyond hope, and there forgotten pathetically starts to call out the one word he knows: Skallagrigg... Skallagrigg is a name, but whether of a thing or a person no one in authority knows or cares. Yet down the decades other patients in that terrible place repeat his call, believing, as he does, that one day the Skallagrigg will come and bring him love again. It is 1982, and a girl, Esther Marquand, clever privileged and a computer expert, but cerebral palsied like that long forgotten boy, starts to collect the myths of the Skallagrigg that the handicapped in institutions tell secretly to each other. She discovers that behind the myths lies a terrible reality and, with it a seemingly impossible challenge to find the Skallagrigg. It is 1995, and a young man, the narrator of this haunting and powerful story learns of an extraordinary computer game called Skallagrigg which uses the imagery of windsurfing but which is also a quest through a maze of time and circumstance, rejection and courageous love. Through it he learns the story of Esther Marquand, of her courageous friend Tom, of the father who learned to love her, of Helen, the elderly woman who befriended her, and of the man who married her. And from all this he begins to suspect the truth of the Skallagrigg for whom he too must search, and in whom he must find a reconciliation with the shameful past of his own family a past that began, long ago in 1927, when a little boy was abandoned and began to callout a name whose true meaning no one wanted to understand...

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0670801321
• ISBN 13: 9780670801329
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 576