Product details
- ISBN 9781408864791
- Weight: 140g
- Dimensions: 128 x 196mm
- Publication Date: 11 Jan 2018
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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A masterful debut short story collection from the award-winning, critically-acclaimed poet Adam O’Riordan
'Wonderfully lyrical and bittersweet' OBSERVER
'This is a wonderful, beguiling collection of short stories. Written with a cool, knowing lyricism, they haunt and enthral' WILLIAM BOYD
'An auspicious debut, full of unforgettable lines and hard-won insights. Adam O’Riordan is the real thing' HUGO WILLIAMS
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In these eight stories, an English writer focuses his gaze on America’s West Coast, moving from fractured lives in remote, sun-scorched towns to the charged hum of Venice Beach.
A man visits his long-distance lover in Los Angeles and forges an unexpected bond with a fellow traveller on the way;
a teenager interviews a businessman for his school newspaper and their paths continue to cross, throughout life;
the foreman of a desert building project embarks on a journey down the Pacific Coast Highway and into California’s underworld when his employer's daughter goes missing;
a lonely widower reflects on the past and confronts a disturbing and long suppressed memory;
a divorced father tries to reconnect with his son on a hunting trip;
an artist finds peace in exile after the disintegration of an affair;
and itinerant Brits discuss love and acting in downtown LA.
Written with an outsider’s keen eye, this collection of stories paints an intimate portrait of diverse lives, in a work of remarkable beauty and poignancy.
Adam O’Riordan was born in Manchester in 1982 and read English at Oxford University. In 2008 O’Riordan became the youngest Writer in Residence at The Wordsworth Trust, the Centre for British Romanticism. His first collection of poetry, In the Flesh, won a Somerset Maugham Award in 2011. He is Senior Lecturer at the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. The Burning Ground is his first collection of short stories.
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