Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... The Amusementsby Aingeala Flannery
Books Read in 2024 (908) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Aingeala Flannery's prose is smooth and shot through with darkly wry humour; her characters are well-observed and convincing. When seen as a set of vignettes of life in an Irish seaside town over the last 30 years or so, this book works well. But is The Amusements actually a novel? That's the aspect in which Flannery failed to convince me. The acknowledgements make clear that a couple of the chapters started life as individual short stories, and while I'm sure Flannery revised them before including them here, she didn't seem to find a way to make them—or the rest of the chapters—cohere as a whole. There's not enough focus, not enough of a connective thread. If I had to guess, Flannery was told "these short stories are great, but short stories don't sell, we'll publish your work if you can turn it into a novel in a fortnight." ( ) no reviews | add a review
AwardsNotable Lists
'THIS BOOK is EVERYTHING. The characters are painfully, beautifully real, the writing is IMPECCABLE . . . I LOVED it' Marian Keyes 'Brilliant' Irish Examiner 'Unputdownable . . . one of the best novels of the year' Sunday Independent In the seaside town of Tramore, County Waterford, visitors arrive in waves with the tourist season, reliving the best days of their childhoods in its caravan parks, chippers and amusement arcades. Local teenager Helen Grant is indifferent to the charm of her surroundings; she dreams of escaping to art college with her glamorous classmate Stella Swaine and, from there, taking on the world. But leaving Tramore is easier said than done. Though they don't yet know it, Helen and Stella's lives are pulled by tides beyond their control. Following the Grant and Swaine families and their neighbours over three decades, The Amusements is a luminous and unforgettable story about roads taken and not taken - and a brilliantly observed portrait of a small-town community. __________ 'Flannery's flawed, hopeful characters live and grow on the page' ANNE ENRIGHT, author of The Gathering 'Brilliant . . . her sentences crackle with life, energy and devastating insight into the human condition. She writes with a rare combination of compassion and black humour. Her characters live on in my mind like people I have always known' LIA MILLS, author of In Your Face 'Effortless, perceptive, and hugely entertaining - I loved it' DONAL RYAN, author of Strange Flowers 'A cracker of a book' KATHLEEN MAC MAHON, author of Nothing But Blue Sky 'Fantastic . . . we were gripped' STELLAR 'If you like dark humour, superbly drawn characters, caravan parks, fish suppers and slot machines, The Amusements is what you've been waiting for' JAN CARSON, author of The Fire Starters 'A joy to read' LOUISE NEALON, author of Snowflake 'A brilliant book. I loved meeting all these characters, who jumped off the page and stayed in my head' RÓISÍN INGLE 'Brilliant. Dramatic, heartfelt, sometimes shocking and sad' IRISH EXAMINER No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNone
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |