Love and Sleep [Paperback]

Sean O'Reilly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 4, 2002

Sean O'Reilly's debut novel is a journey inside the dark psyche of Niall, a young man on the run from the past and denying himself a future. Arriving in Derry, years after he left for a wandering life, Niall finds that very little has changed. The streets are still blighted by sectarian violence and the grubby pubs still cater for the lost and lonely. Just as his memories, fears or desires threaten to consume him, Niall enters into a complicated relationship, with Lorna, a committed socialist with a dark side of her own. Haunted by a past that only gradually gives up its secrets and insensate for most of the time through a cocktail of booze and drugs. Niall lives his life to extremes, testing and pushing himself ever closer to destruction. Love and Sleep confirms O'Reilly's rising reputation as a writer of rare lyrical power and urgency.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Pain and rage engulf Niall when he returns to Derry after years of living on the continent. He doesn't attend his father's funeral, much to brother Michael's disgust, and it isn't long until Michael throws him out after the police dump Niall at the door after one of his hostile drunken binges. Niall's world--Northern Ireland in the early 1990s, just after the first IRA ceasefire ended--is dark, disordered, and despairing. So when he encounters passionate socialist Lorna, she rouses no sexual interest in him. Indeed, she seems drawn to her older mentor in the movement. Yet the two younger people eventually drift together in aimless, nihilistic ennui, shot through with bouts of furious yelling and well lubricated with drink. O'Reilly is especially good at evoking the anonymous longing of the disenfranchised young and at times recalls the existential angst of Jean-Paul Sartre, with a dollop of Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov for good measure. Readers whose tastes run toward such stuff will be rewarded by a complementary richness of language and texture. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

'Sean O'Reilly is a writer of massive range and impressive innovation... He is a stylist and you find yourself beguiled, finessed, seduced and dazzled.' Eoin McNamee 'An original and affecting voice in Irish fiction, one infected by a muted pathos and bleak lyricism.' Irish Times

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Faber (February 4, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571205453
• ISBN-13: 978-0571205455
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,157,448 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars The Joy of Bleak, July 25, 2011

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Ms. Mary O'donnell (Kildare, Ireland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Love and Sleep (Paperback)

Well-written novel. Language beautiful, arresting and succinct. This is the book's main attraction. The activity (there is no plot) depends a lot on the fact of the war in the North of Ireland being of interest in itself, which it isn't necessarily. The characters caught within the hopelessness of their social and political milieu are solid, young, and even passionate in an odd way, if passion can have a negative value. In a world of tranquillising mush that often passes for fiction, the strength of this work is in its tonal bleakness.