Ghost Light
by Joseph O'Connor
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very Good+/Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 0374161879
- ISBN 13
- 9780374161873
- Seller
-
Kansas City, Missouri, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
First American Edition, 1st printing. Light surface and corner wear to the dust jacket. Interior pages as new.
Synopsis
JOSEPH O'CONNOR was born in Dublin. His books include six previous novels: Cowboys and Indians (Whitbread Prize shortlist), Desperadoes , The Salesman , Inishowen , Star of the Sea , and Redemption Falls . Star of the Sea became an international bestseller, winning the Irish Post Award for Fiction, an American Library Association Award, France's Prix Millepages, Italy's Premio Acerbi, and the Prix Madeleine Zepter for European Novel of the Year. His work has been published in thirty-five languages.
Reviews
Ghost Light, Joseph O'Connor★★★
Theater people are a superstitious lot. This aptly titled novel refers to one of the more common of those superstitions: a light that is left on in a theater to allow its resident ghosts to perform on stage after the theater closes, thus appeasing them and preventing them from wreaking havoc on the production or its audience. Throughout the pages of this novel, the actress Maire (Molly) O'Neill, nee Mary Allgood, like a theater ghost, relives the important moments of her life as she moves toward its tragic end. Molly is a real-life character, one of the most famous actress of the Dublin stage in the early 1900s. Her love affair with playwright John Millington Synge was deemed as scandalous as his play "The Playboy of the Western World" by Irish society, which could not see beyond the differences in their social classes. Their relationship, as portrayed in the novel, was deep, lasting until Synge's untimely death in 1909, not yet 39 years of age. O'Connor weaves in and out of eras, from 1905 Ireland to 1930s Hollywood to 1954 London, where the down-and-out alcoholic actress met her death. All of the major actors in the Irish Literary Revival make at least a brief appearance in the narrative, a bonus for all who love Irish literature and history. O'Connor's prose is filled with wonderfully crafted descriptions of place, time, and emotions. The tale is so well told that it will make little difference whether the reader is a student of Irish literature or just a lover of a captivating tale with an Irish flair.
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Details
- Bookseller
- BooksGalore (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 0616-CHBK-DTB-BX340-7.87
- Title
- Ghost Light
- Author
- Joseph O'Connor
- Format/Binding
- Sewn binding
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good+
- Jacket Condition
- Very Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10
- 0374161879
- ISBN 13
- 9780374161873
- Publisher
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2010
- Pages
- 246
- Bookseller catalogs
- Irish History and Literature;
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