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Description
A compelling story of life and death, of loss and trauma; a story, too, of colonisers and natives, of language and power.
The novelistic debut of a truly committed and gifted writer.” Pat McCabe
Winner of the Arts Council of Ireland’s largest single award (£10,000) for a prose work-in-progress, for this book. Winner of the Marianne Pallotti Fellowship (California).
In the summer of 1849 Queen Victoria is on the throne; the British Empire is at its zenith; the Californian gold rush has started, and cholera stalks the streets of London. In an Irish rectory, his wife and younger daughter away in London, Dr John Drew finds the peace and quiet to work on a cuneiform inscription of Darius the Great from Persepolis. But now his fellow translator has abandoned him, his maid has run out on him, his older daughter has eloped with a Catholic farmer, and a murder suspect comes calling...
The Luck Penny is a tale of a man and a woman and the secret scriptures of the dead. It is a tale of coming to terms with that tragedy of tragedies: the death of a child. The Luck Penny, ultimately, is about the victory of life over memory.
“There are echoes of Joyce, delivering not only a terrific story but a powerful display of language as well. There are resonances of Ackroyd and Stevenson, and the feel for London and the past never errs. This is a novel where place really matters – authenticity seeps from the page, whether teeming municipality or quiet Irish midlands village in a far-flung corner of the hegemonic British Empire in 1849.” Pat McCabe
John Maher (also known as Jack Barry) is a winner of the Francis McManus Award, the P.J. O’Connor Radio Play Award, an Arts Council Writer’s Bursary, and other awards and fellowships. He lives in Dublin, working as a writer and researcher. |
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Author
John Maher (also known as Jack Barry) is a winner of the Francis McManus Award, the P.J. O’Connor Radio Play Award, the Lar Cassidy Memorial Award, a Marianne Palotti Fellowship, an Arts Council Writer’s Bursary, and other awards and fellowships. Under the pen name of Jack Barry, his first crime thriller, Miss Katie Regrets, was published in 2006. Born in Dublin in 1954, he lives in Dublin, working as a writer and researcher; he has three children.
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