This Is The Way - Hardcover

Corbett, Gavin

3.25

92 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0865478910 ISBN 13: 9780865478916

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2013

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Anthony Sonaghan is hiding out in an old tenement house in Dublin: he fears he's reignited an ancient feud between the two halves of his family. Twenty-first-century Dublin may have shopping malls and foreign exchange students, but Anthony is from an Irish Travelling community, where blood ties are bound deeply to the past. When his roguish uncle Arthur shows up on his doorstep with a missing toe, delirious and apparently on the run, history and its troubles are following close behind him--and Anthony will soon have to face the question of who he really is.

In prose of exceptional vividness, Gavin Corbett brings us a narrator with the power to build a new, previously unimagined world. His language, shot through with dreams and myths, summons a vision of Ireland in which a premodern spirit has somehow survived into contemporary life, brooding and overlooked. Funny, terrible, unsettling, fiercely unsentimental,This Is the Way is haunted by some of Ireland's greatest writers even as it breaks new ground and asks afresh why the imagination is so necessary to survival.

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Review:

‘A curious and delightful confection ... A sly and lovely humour dominates ... Anthony Sonaghan and Uncle Arthur will linger a long while with readers ... A memorable work from a gifted writer whose next moves we should await with very keen interest’ Kevin Barry, Guardian

‘This fresh and funny novel is a devastating love story – one that comes upon you by stealth and stays with you long after you’ve finished reading’ Claire Lowdon, New Statesman

‘Within a couple of pages, I had fallen into the rhythm of a unique and extraordinary voice.’ Kate Saunders, Daily Mail

‘Corbett creates a memorable voice to explore the power that heritage wields over an outsider struggling to find his place in the world’ Sunday Times

‘It’s a bloody good story’ Spectator

‘The triumph is in the telling. Anthony’s voice, once heard, is hard to forget; its rhythms, its repetitions, its sly humour – all strike the reader as genuinely original. It’s a timely reminder that while fiction may not change things in the real world, it does offer us new ways to dream’ Irish Times

'A troubling, mysterious, demanding and beautiful book, narrated in a voice unlike any I have encountered in fiction. Corbett knows what he's doing: every sentence throbs with power.' Emma Donoghue, author of ‘Room’

‘A writer with the rigorous introspection of James Kelman, mediated by the compassion of Raymond Carver and the visceral imagination of Alan Warner. Yes, and a hearty measure of Flann O'Brien besides. But the hell with the antecedents: the man is an original, with a bridge to the world of first things he's fashioned for himself.’ James Meek, author of ‘The People's Act of Love’

‘A wonderful new voice.’ Joseph O’Neill, author of ‘Netherland’

‘The voice is brilliant. It is tender and true, arcane and elevated. It holds the past and present in a single visionary gaze. This is not only a wonderful book, it is a book about wonders.’ Eoin McNamee, author of ‘Resurrection Man’ and ‘The Blue Tango’

About the Author:

Gavin Corbett was born in the west of Ireland and was raised in Dublin, where he studied history at Trinity College.This Is the Way is his second novel. He lives in Dublin.

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