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Academy Street: A Novel
by Costello, Mary
- Used
- Hardcover
- Condition
- Used - Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 0374100527
- ISBN 13
- 9780374100520
- Seller
-
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Used - Very Good. 2015. Cloth, dj. Minor shelf-wear. (Subject: )
Reviews
On Aug 30 2014, CloggieDownunder said:
“Another vocation, then, reading, akin, even, to falling in love, she thought, stirring, as it did, the kind of emotions and extreme feelings she desired, feelings of innocence and longing that returned her to those vaguely perfect states she had experienced as a child.”
Academy Street is the first novel by Irish author, Mary Costello. It chronicles the life of Teresa Lohan, from her youth in rural Ireland in the 1940s through her time in New York and her return to Ireland in her sixties. Tess is seemingly unremarkable, both as a child and an adult: a shy, sensitive child; a woman with an essential loneliness (“It seemed at times that she was marooned on an island, a moat of water, wide and black, separating her from all human love.”); a mother who feels she could have done better. Nonetheless, Costello’s exquisite prose conveys this life with such emotion, such care, that the reader cannot help but be moved. Costello paints her character so vividly, so completely, that the reader can identify with Tess, her feelings (“…the mark of all anxiety: the acute awareness of the endless possibilities that can simultaneously imperil and enhance us, and all that might be lost or gained.”), her ideas (“It [Ireland] seemed to her now to be a place without dreams, or where dreaming was prohibited. Here, life could be lived at a higher, truer pitch. Though her own was a timid life, there was, since Theo’s birth, a yearning towards motion and spirit and vitality.”), her reactions (“She thought of the water that had lain quietly calm, each tiny drop, each molecule, restful, suddenly wrenched, catapulted through a metal rotary, tossed back out into the turbulent current, reeling, confounded, changed.”). In both style and content, this novel is reminiscent of Sebastian Barry’s work, in particular, “On Canaan’s Side”. A remarkable debut novel.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Powell's Bookstores Chicago (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- SOL13200
- Title
- Academy Street: A Novel
- Author
- Costello, Mary
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10
- 0374100527
- ISBN 13
- 9780374100520
- Publisher
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Place of Publication
- New York, Ny
- This edition first published
- 2015-04
Terms of Sale
Powell's Bookstores Chicago
All orders subject to previous sale. Domestic Standard ships USPS Bound Printed Matter; Domestic Expedited ships UPS Ground; International ships via Air courier. All orders over $200.00 upgraded to UPS Ground without additional charge.
About the Seller
Powell's Bookstores Chicago
Biblio member since 2005
Chicago, Illinois
About Powell's Bookstores Chicago
Used, rare and out-of-print titles, specializing in academic and scholarly books. Independent bookstores in Chicago since 1970
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...