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.

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 the Author
Patrick McGrath is the author of a short story collection, Blood and Water and Other Tales, and six novels: The Grotesque, Spider, Dr Haggard's Disease, Asylum, Martha Peake and most recently Port Mungo, which was published by Bloomsbury. He lives in London and New York. Spider was made into a film in 2002 by acclaimed director David Cronenberg.

Reviews
'As sharp and haunting as a daguerreotype ... McGrath's prose is clean, lucid and utterly transfixing' Sunday Times 'The best of McGrath's menace is vividly present ... McGrath remains one of the most interesting, and possibly the most consistently original of his generation of British writers' Irish Times 'Like a latter-day Edgar Allan Poe, McGrath probes the insanity and violence lurking beneath the skin of daily life' Financial Times 'There ought to be a word for that style of literary composition that is both charming and dark; McGrath has mastered it, and his collection brings out the same qualities in New York' Daily Telegraph



Book Information
ISBN 9780747583721
Author Patrick McGrath
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC