Lies of Silence by Brian Moore
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: An unhappy marriage is further shaken when IRA terrorists invade the couple's home in this first rate thriller (The New York Times).Michael Dillon, a self-described poet in a business suit, is a once-aspiring writer in Belfast whose dreams have been consumed by a stultifying career as a hotel manager and a hateful marriage to his unstable wife, Moira. But on the day he decides to leave Moira for his younger lover and take off for London, IRA terrorists break into the Dillon home. Their plan is simple: They'll hold Moira hostage while Michael plants a bomb designed to kill a rabble-rousing Protestant and his flock convening for a political rally. If Michael goes to the police, Moira dies. It's only the first choice of many--because in Brian Moore's breathtakingly constructed nightmare, the day has just begun (Los Angeles Times).
The plot is] one that only a spoiler would reveal--and risk ruining the surprises that detonate throughout the novel like cleverly hidden and elegantly designed incendiary devices. The notion of 'unbearable suspense' is, of course, a clich', but I found that I kept briefly putting down the novel to postpone the moment when I had to face what might happen next. --Francine Prose, The New York Times
Brian Moore (1921-1999) was born into a large, devoutly Catholic family in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His father was a surgeon and lecturer, and his mother had been a nurse. Moore left Ireland during World War II and in 1948 moved to Canada, where he worked for the Montreal Gazette, married his first wife, and began to write potboilers under various pen names, as he would continue to do throughout the 1950s. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955, now available as an NYRB Classic), said to have been rejected by a dozen publishers, was the first book Moore published under his own name, and it was followed by nineteen subsequent novels written in a broad range of modes and styles, from the realistic to the historical to the quasi-fantastical, including The Luck of Ginger Coffey, An Answer from Limbo, The Emperor of Ice-Cream, I Am Mary Dunne, Catholics, Black Robe, and The Statement. Three novels--Lies of Silence, Color of Blood, and The Magician's Wife--were short-listed for the Booker Prize, and The Great Victorian Collection won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. After adapting The Luck of Ginger Coffey for film in 1964, Moore moved to California to work on the script for Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain. He remained in Malibu for the rest of his life, remarrying there and teaching at UCLA for some fifteen years. Shortly before his death, Moore wrote, There are those stateless wanderers who, finding the larger world into which they have stumbled vast, varied and exciting, become confused in their loyalties and lose their sense of home. I am one of those wanderers.
Christopher Ricks teaches at Boston University and is a former president of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. From 2004 to 2009 he was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is True Friendship: Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht, and Robert Lowell Under the Sign of Eliot and Pound.
Christopher Ricks teaches at Boston University and is a former president of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. From 2004 to 2009 he was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is True Friendship: Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht, and Robert Lowell Under the Sign of Eliot and Pound.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780385415149 |
| ISBN 10 | 0385415141 |
| Title | Lies of Silence |
| Author | Brian Moore |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Nan A. Talese |
| Year published | 1990-08-01 |
| Number of pages | 197 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |