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Description for Academy Street
hardcover. First edition. Copy fine in dustjacket. DJ has wear and discolouring to edges but remains very good overall.
She stood on the edge of the grass. She hovered between worlds, deciphering the ground, tracing in mid-air the hall, the dining-room, the stairs. She was despairingly close to home now, to the rooms and the voices that contained the first names for home. Memories abounded and her heart pounded and history broke in . . . Growing up in the west of Ireland in the 1940s Tess is a shy introverted child. But beneath her quiet exterior lies a heart of fire. A fire that will later drive her to make her home among the hurly burly of 1960s New York. Over four decades and a life lived with quiet intensity on Academy Street in upper Manhattan, Tess encounters ferocious love and calamitous loss. But what endures is her bravery and fortitude, and her striking insights even as she is 'floating close to hazard.' Joyous and heart-breaking, restrained but sweeping, this is a profoundly moving story that charts one woman's quest for belonging amid the dazzle and tumult of America's greatest city. Academy Street establishes Mary Costello as one of Ireland's most exciting literary voices.
Product Details
Condition
Used, Very Good
Publisher
Canongate Books London
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2014
Number of Pages
192
Place of Publication
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
ISBN
9781782114185
SKU
KEX0274050
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 2 to 4 working days
Ref
99-1
About Mary Costello
Mary Costello grew up in County Galway. Her collection of short stories, The China Factory, was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award. Her stories have been published in various anthologies and broadcast on radio. She lives in Dublin. Her debut novel, Academy Street, has been shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award 2014 and the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year 2014. Join the discussion on Twitter #AcademyStreet
Reviews for Academy Street
Packed with emotional intensity
Sunday Times
A writer of huge ability . . . Brings to mind John Williams's resurrected masterpiece, Stoner
Guardian
To recount a life story in a novel is a difficult task. To do so with brevity and unsentimental honesty takes greatness. Academy Street is a powerful and emotional novel from one of literature's finest new voices
JOHN BOYNE An exceptional first novel
The Times
With extraordinary devotion, Mary Costello brings to life a woman who would otherwise have faded into oblivion
J.M. COETZEE Mary Costello's writing has the kind of urgency that the great problems demand - call them themes; they are the kind of problems that make a writer
ANNE ENRIGHT
Guardian
Academy Street is understated, graceful and, ultimately, devastating. Even as my heart was breaking I couldn't put the book down
DONAL RYAN, author of The Spinning Heart Intensely moving but never sentimental, Academy Street is a profound meditation on what Faulkner called 'the human heart in conflict with itself'. In Tess Lohan, Mary Costello has created one of the most fully realised characters in contemporary fiction. What a marvel of a book
RON RASH Costello proves herself an absolute master in Academy Street
Independent
A novel where the interior life on an ordinary woman is delineated with artistry and grace
Metro
Delve[s] deep into the human condition, into the bittersweet beauty of life
Irish Times
In her deceptively easygoing debut novel, Costello has refined her already spare style so that scarcely a word or phrase feels extraneous
Metro Herald
An unimpeachable addition to the literature of Irish diaspora
Country Life
The work of a highly accomplished writer and heralds the emergence of an exciting new novelist . . . Academy Street will keep you glued to its crisp pages, such is the intensity of its language and scale of its emotional reach. This is a novel that should be read by anyone who cares about writing and its ability to invoke
Irish Independent
A markedly brave book, an unblinking attempt to recreate a life of intense ordinariness and make it special . . . well worth applauding
Sunday Times
Extraordinarily compelling
Guardian
Excellent
Times Literary Supplement
Immense maturity and unusual writerly empathy
Scotsman
A devastatingly sad, unsentimental and beautifully wrought account of a quiet life
Psychologies
Heart-breaking
The Simple Things
A major literary accomplishment from an exciting new voice
Westmeath Independent
Tess's fearful, reserved exterior and rich inner world is written with exacting discipline. Every emotion, every sensory image is pared back on the page, stripped right down to its very essence . . . Academy Street will keep you glued to its crisp pages, such is the intensity of its language and scale of its emotional reach
Irish Independent
Sunday Times
A writer of huge ability . . . Brings to mind John Williams's resurrected masterpiece, Stoner
Guardian
To recount a life story in a novel is a difficult task. To do so with brevity and unsentimental honesty takes greatness. Academy Street is a powerful and emotional novel from one of literature's finest new voices
JOHN BOYNE An exceptional first novel
The Times
With extraordinary devotion, Mary Costello brings to life a woman who would otherwise have faded into oblivion
J.M. COETZEE Mary Costello's writing has the kind of urgency that the great problems demand - call them themes; they are the kind of problems that make a writer
ANNE ENRIGHT
Guardian
Academy Street is understated, graceful and, ultimately, devastating. Even as my heart was breaking I couldn't put the book down
DONAL RYAN, author of The Spinning Heart Intensely moving but never sentimental, Academy Street is a profound meditation on what Faulkner called 'the human heart in conflict with itself'. In Tess Lohan, Mary Costello has created one of the most fully realised characters in contemporary fiction. What a marvel of a book
RON RASH Costello proves herself an absolute master in Academy Street
Independent
A novel where the interior life on an ordinary woman is delineated with artistry and grace
Metro
Delve[s] deep into the human condition, into the bittersweet beauty of life
Irish Times
In her deceptively easygoing debut novel, Costello has refined her already spare style so that scarcely a word or phrase feels extraneous
Metro Herald
An unimpeachable addition to the literature of Irish diaspora
Country Life
The work of a highly accomplished writer and heralds the emergence of an exciting new novelist . . . Academy Street will keep you glued to its crisp pages, such is the intensity of its language and scale of its emotional reach. This is a novel that should be read by anyone who cares about writing and its ability to invoke
Irish Independent
A markedly brave book, an unblinking attempt to recreate a life of intense ordinariness and make it special . . . well worth applauding
Sunday Times
Extraordinarily compelling
Guardian
Excellent
Times Literary Supplement
Immense maturity and unusual writerly empathy
Scotsman
A devastatingly sad, unsentimental and beautifully wrought account of a quiet life
Psychologies
Heart-breaking
The Simple Things
A major literary accomplishment from an exciting new voice
Westmeath Independent
Tess's fearful, reserved exterior and rich inner world is written with exacting discipline. Every emotion, every sensory image is pared back on the page, stripped right down to its very essence . . . Academy Street will keep you glued to its crisp pages, such is the intensity of its language and scale of its emotional reach
Irish Independent