Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now (Writer and the City Series) - Softcover

McGrath, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747583722 ISBN 13: 9780747583721

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2006

Synopsis

A man is haunted by the memory of his mother with a rope round her neck. It is the American War of Independence, and having defied the British forces occupying New York she must pay for her revolutionary activities. But fifty years on, her son harbours a festering guilt for his inadvertent part in her downfall. In thrusting nineteenth-century New York, a ruthless merchant's sensitive son is denied the love of his life through his father's prejudice against the immigrants flooding into the city - and madness and violence ensue. In the wake of 9/11, a Manhattan psychiatrist treats a favoured patient reeling from the destruction of the World Trade Center, but fails to detect the damage she herself has sustained. In this trio of stunning tales from a master storyteller, Patrick McGrath excavates the layers of New York's turbulent history.

About this title

Review:

‘As sharp and haunting as a daguerreotype ... McGrath’s prose is clean, lucid and utterly transfixing’ -- Sunday Times

‘Like a latter-day Edgar Allan Poe, McGrath probes the insanity and violence lurking beneath the skin of daily life’ -- Financial Times

‘The narrative cleverly winds around themes of suffocation, manipulation and deceit’ -- Telegraph

‘The private hells festering in our diseased minds inspire this invariably original English writer’s singular fictions’ -- Irish Times

‘Three short stories crack open Manhattan at a particular stage in its history’ -- The Times

From the Publisher:

A vision of New York which has extraordinary scope, stretching back into history and ahead to post-9/11, by the acclaimed author of Asylum, Spider and Port Mungo

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0747583722
• ISBN 13: 9780747583721
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256