The Star of the Sea [Signed by Author]

O'Connor, Joseph

ISBN 10: 0436210134 / ISBN 13: 9780436210136

Published by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd, London, 2002

About this Item

First edition first printing soft cover. A little edge wear and corner bumping to pictorial wraps. Some creasing to bottom right corner. Internally clean bright and tight. Signed (not inscribed) on half title page in blue pen. No other pen marks or inscriptions. Please examine all seller photos.

Seller Inventory # 001490

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Star of the Sea [Signed by Author]
• Publisher: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd, London
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0436210134
• ISBN 13: 9780436210136
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Weight: 452 grams
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • First Editions
  • Signed

About this title

Synopsis

In a story of tragedy and mercy, love and healing, the nearer the ship gets to the Promised Land, the more her passengers seem moored to a past which will never let them go.

Review

Tragedy is a word too often used. Nevertheless, in Star of the Sea Joseph O'Connor manages to achieve a real sense of the tragic, as personal dramas of the most distressing kind play themselves out against the background of the Irish potato famine and the almost equal nightmare of the mass emigration that it caused. As passengers die of starvation and disease in steerage, a drama of adultery, inadvertent incest and inherited disease plays itself out in first class. O'Connor raises, and does not attempt definitively to answer, real questions about responsibility and choice.

Bankrupt aristocrat Meredith is emigrating, pursued by the hatred of his tenants and the memory of his mad-hero father. His children's nurse, Mary, has memories of lost love to torment her, as well as of the husband and child who died of hunger. And the ballad singer Mulvey has both his monstrous past and the certain promise that he will be tortured to death by the Liable Men should he not kill Meredith. This is a kaleidoscopic novel, whose events are seen in many idioms, from many points of view--it is a rich novel that knows that there are limits to the sense that can be made of history. --Roz Kaveney