SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE _______________________ 'Near perfection... one of the outstanding works of fiction of the year.' - The Times 'A splendidly bracing experience.' - New Statesman _______________________ Sheila Redden, a quiet, 37-year-old doctor's wife, has long been looking forward to returning with her husband to the town where they spent their honeymoon over twenty years ago. Little does she suspect that after a chance encounter in Paris she will end up spending her holiday with a man she has only just met, an American man ten years her junior. Four weeks later, Sheila is nowhere to be found. Owen Deane, her brother, follows her steps to Paris in the hopes of shedding some light on her disappearance, but soon begins to wonder if she will ever reappear. Interspersed with Sheila's harrowing memories of her hometown of Ulster at the height of the troubles, this is a compelling and powerful tale of love, escape and abandon. _______________________ 'The subject - an ordinary woman seized by love for a younger man in the middle of her life - supplies just the right material for Mr. Moore's tender, probing technique. It is uncanny: No other male writer, I swear (and precious few females), knows so much about women' - Sunday Telegraph

Shortlisted for The Booker Prize

About the Author
Brian Moore was born in Belfast. He emigrated to Canada in 1948 and then moved to California. He twice won the Canadian Governor General's Award for Fiction and has been given a special award from the United States Institute of Arts and Letters. He won the Author's Club First Novel Award for The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Great Victorian Collection. The Doctor's Wife, The Colour of Blood - winner of the Sunday Express 1988 Book of the Year - and Lies of Silence were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Six of his novels have been made into films - The Luck of Ginger Coffey, Catholics, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Cold Heaven, The Statement and Black Robe. Brian Moore died in 1999.

Reviews
'The subject - an ordinary woman seized by love for a younger man in the middle of her life - supplies just the right material for Mr Moore's tender, probing technique. It is uncanny: No other male writer, I swear (and precious few females), knows so much about women' * Sunday Telegraph *
'The novel is near perfection. The elegance and clarity of style rides in perfect harmony with the subtlety and depth of feeling. The dialogue is perfect- the author's ear sharp for the cadences of ecstasy, self-pity, love and anger. The feeling for mood and background is perfect... a novel of mature assurance and brilliant insight that must make it one of the outstanding works of fiction of the year.' * The Times *
'Nightmare images of tanks cruising down empty night streets, feverish erotic couplings with a stranger in foreign hotels; a married woman from a provincial backwater breaking out on a trip abroad; a concerned sibling observing a rebellious sister; the palpable absence of God in the central characters' lives and the notion that art and sex might replace Him... a splendidly bracing experience.' * New Statesman *



Book Information
ISBN 9781408827024
Author Brian Moore
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Weight(grams) 201g