Gaff Topsails - Hardcover

Kavanagh, Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670877662 ISBN 13: 9780670877669

Publisher: Viking, 1998

Synopsis

This first novel is a tapestry woven from sea, soil, and the souls of a small Irish Catholic parish on the coast of Newfoundland. It is June 24, 1948 - the Feast of St. John the Baptist, the Bringer of Light, commemorated with bonfires ignited on the headlands. Father MacMurrough, newly arrived and desperately lonely, reflects on a failed love affair. Michael Barron, a young mute, falls in love and is puzzled by the way that his life - like the tremendous iceberg he and his friends explore - is turning into a dangerous business. His pious younger brother, Kevin, is terrorized by whispering monsters and imagined sins. Mary, an adolescent dreamer, invokes the pagan superstitions of Midsummer's Day in the hopes of divining her future husband. On a rooftop overlooking the sea, a woman rocks her baby as she waits for her fisherman husband to return home. Meanwhile, Old Johnny, the drunken lighthouse keeper, staggers through the day, haunted by the phantoms of his past. Behind all of them looms the founding father of the village, an Irish castaway, the son of a monk, dead five hundred years. Even in the middle of the twentieth century, something of his spirit survives within every soul in the community.

About this title

About the Author:

Patrick Kavanagh was born in 1950 in Newfoundland, Canada. After university in the USA he worked for Amnesty International in Canada. He has also travelled in the far East and assisted in translating Joyce's ULYSSES into Chinese.

Synopsis:

Presents a portrait of a small Irish-Catholic parish on the coast of Newfoundland in 1948, where Father MacMurrough tends a flock of dreamers, mutes, lonely women, and lighthouse keepers.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0670877662
• ISBN 13: 9780670877669
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 448