Böcker av Bernard MacLaverty

Set in the Northern Ireland of the 1980's, Cal tells the story of a young Catholic man living in a Protestant area. Springing out of the fear and violence of Ulster, Cal is a haunting love story that unfolds in a land where tenderness and innocence can only flicker briefly in the dark.

On a promontory jutting out into the Atlantic wind stands the Home run by Brother Benedict, where boys are taught a little of God and a lot of fear. But as the outside world closes in around them - as time, money and opportunity run out - Michael finds himself moving towards a solution that is as uncompromising as it is inspired by love.

The extraordinary new story collection from one of Ireland's greatest writers and bestselling author of Mindwinter Break. Bernard MacLaverty is a consummately gifted short-story writer and novelist whose work - like that of John McGahern, William Trevor, Edna O'Brien or Colm Tóibín - is deceptively simple on the surface, but carries a turbulent undertow. Everywhere, the dark currents of violence, persecution and regret pull at his subject matter: family love, the making of art, Catholicism, the Troubles and, latterly, ageing. Blank Pages is a collection of twelve extraordinary new stories that show the emotional range of a master. 'Blackthorns', for instance, tells of a poor out-of-work Catholic man who falls gravely ill in the sectarian Northern Ireland of 1942 but is brought back from the brink by an unlikely saviour. The most recently written story here is the harrowing but transcendent 'The End of Days', which imagines the last moments in the life of painter Egon Schiele, watching his wife dying of Spanish flu - the world's worst pandemic, until now. Much of what MacLaverty writes is an amalgam of sadness and joy, of circumlocution and directness. He never wastes words but neither does he ever forget to make them sing. Each story he writes creates a universe.

Grace Notes is a compact and altogether masterful portrait of a woman composer and the complex interplay between her life and her art. With superb artistry and startling intimacy, it brings us into the life of Catherine McKenna-estranged daughter, vexed lover, new mother, and musician making her mark in a male-dominated world. It is a book that the Virginia Woolf of A Room of One's Own would instantly understand.

Since the publication of Secrets and Other Stories in 1977, Bernard MacLaverty has been celebrated as one of the finest living short-story writers. Each of these extraordinary stories - with their wry, self-deprecating humour, their elegance and subtle wisdom - gets to the very heart of life.

`Midwinter Break is a work of extraordinary emotional precision and sympathy, about coming to terms - to an honest reckoning - with love and the loss of love, with memory and pain.

When Brother Sebastian, nee Michael Lamb, runs away from a bleak reformatory, taking with him twelve-year-old Owen Kane, the media and the police call it a kidnapping. For Lamb, though, it is a rescue of a formerly abused boy from a place of no hope, a last grasp at an elusive happiness. But as the outside world closes in, as time and money run out, Lamb finds himself moving towards a solution that is as shocking as it is loving.

In Phonefun Limited Sadie and Agnes, retired prostitutes hit upon an inventive new way of making someone happy with a phone call, while in My Dear Palestrina' a remarkable music teacher initiates her pupil into the mysteries of art and maturity.

Any book of stories from Bernard MacLaverty is a cause for celebration, but Matters of Life and Death is more than that, as it is - without question - one of the finest contemporary examples of the short story as a genre.

Returning to Belfast after a long absense, to attend her father`s funeral. This is a novel, about coming to terms with the past and the healing power of music, GRACE NOTES is a master story-teller`s triumphant return to the long form: a powerful lyrical novel of great distinction.

This is the story of the growing up of Martin Brennan, a troubled boy in troubled times, a boy who knows all the questions but none of the answers.