The Misremembered Man

by Christina McKenna

Overview

The Misremembered Man is a beautifully rendered portrait of life in rural Ireland which charms and delights with its authentic characters and gentle humor. This vivid portrayal of the universal search for love brings with it a darker tale, heartbreaking in its poignancy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781935597766
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	06/07/2011
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Christina McKenna grew up near the village of Draperstown, Northern Ireland. She attended the Belfast College of Art, where she obtained an honours degree in fine art. Having studied English as a postgraduate at the University of Ulster, she taught abroad for several years. She has lived, worked, and painted pictures in Spain, Turkey, Italy, Ecuador, and Mexico. In 2004 she published a memoir, followed by two non-fiction titles on the paranormal: The Dark Sacrament (2006) and Ireland’s Haunted Women (2010). In 2011 she embarked on the Tailorstown Trilogy, a series of novels set in and around a fictional Ulster village. The books—The Misremembered Man, The Disenchanted Widow, and The Godforsaken Daughter—were highly successful and have been translated into several languages.

Editorial Reviews

The first novel by Irish memoirist McKenna (My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress, 2004, etc.) is the story of two 40-ish lonely hearts in County Derry in 1974 who meet through a personals ad. Jamie McCloone is a lonesome farmer who grew up amid horrific cruelty in one of the notorious Catholic orphanages of mid-century Ireland. Ill-educated, awkward and reticent, he is a sweet, slovenly man of simple tastes whose greatest joy is to play the accordion in a local pub. Lydia Devine, on the other hand, grew up the daughter of a stern, pleasure-shunning preacher and his equally frosty and forbidding wife. After her father dies, this cautious, punctilious schoolteacher, who still lives at home and tends to her aging mother, begins to wonder how she might escape the snares of permanent spinsterhood. When a friend cajoles her into placing an ad in the Mid-Ulster Vindicator, an odd, appealing, oft-interrupted correspondence, not quite friendship and not quite courtship, begins between the two. McKenna alternates light social comedy with chapters depicting the Dickensian horrors of Jamie's childhood. Her portrait of rural life is amusing and affectionate, wittily and winningly detailed, but Dickens is a dangerous model: For one thing, the third-person omniscient voice that ruled 19th-century fiction can these days seem heavy handed and artificial. Amiable and competent, but Oliver Twist it is not. Agent: Bill Contardi/Brandt & Hochman

Kirkus Reviews