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PB
198 x 130mm 256pp
ISBN 0 86327 478 1
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The Black Soul.
The sea roars dismally round
the shores of Inverara. Tortured by the chaos of his shell-shocked mind,
a Stranger takes a room on the island. Here lives Red John, scavenger of
wreckage, with his beautiful wife Mary, pirate blood in her veins. Unlit
by sensuality, suffused by hate, the couple's married years have been
stifling.... until the presence of the Stranger unleashes their
passions.......
For as spring softens the wild beauty of Inverara, its light stirs the
depths of the Stranger's black soul. Shedding his philosophy of anguish
and hate, banishing the war ghouls that have stalked his dreams, the
Stranger becomes conscious of the dark-haired Mary – how summer
makes her shiver with life. He is the first man she has ever loved, and
she thrills with sexual awakening. But with autumn comes a sense of
catastrophe. The peasants mutter superstition against Mary; Red John
laughs at nothing, there's murder in his eyes; and the Stranger fears
he'll lose his mind – till he's hurled back to sanity by a madman's
yell.......
Like Ryan's Daughter blasted by lightening, The Black Soul fathoms human
desire. O'Flaherty's prose – with its eye for the tiny details and
vast dramas of nature – recreates the magnificance of his place of
birth. As Wuthering Heights is to the Yorkshire moors, so The Black
Soul is to the Aran Islands.
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