Throw me to the wolves / Patrick McGuinness.
Material type:
TextPublisher: New York : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019Description: 329 pages ; 22 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9781620401514
- 1620401517
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | Mystery | McGuinne Patrick | Available | 33111009148079 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
" Compulsively readable."-- New York Times Book Review
"A significant literary achievement that also happens to be a terrific page-turner."- Jonathan Lee
"Elegantly written, darkly entertaining."- John Banville
"An extraordinary writer of great compassion . . . Stunning."- Denise Mina
In the aftermath of Brexit, the body of a young woman is found by the river Thames, and a neighbor, a retired teacher from Chapleton College, is arrested. An eccentric loner--intellectual, shy, a fastidious dresser with expensive tastes--he is the perfect candidate for a media monstering.
In custody he is interviewed by two detectives: the circumspect Ander, and his workaday foil, Gary. Ander is particularly watchful now, because the man across the table is someone he knows--someone he hasn't seen in nearly thirty years. Determined to salvage the truth as ex-pupils and colleagues line up against the accused, he must face a story from decades back, from his own time as a Chapleton student, at the peak of anti-Irish sentiment.
With the momentum of classic crime fiction, Throw Me to the Wolves follows two mysteries--one unfolding in the media-saturated present, and the other bubbling up from the abusive past of the 1980s English school system. Beautifully written and psychologically acute, it is a novel about memory and childhood, prescient and piercingly funny, as wise as it is tragic.
From the Man Booker Prize-longlisted novelist, a shocking story of voyeurism, betrayal, and the gray areas between truth and fiction that reflects our era of tabloid media and fake news. In the aftermath of Brexit, the body of a young woman is found by the river Thames, and the tabloids are aflame, accusing Mr. Wolphram, the woman's former teacher and the ultimate media quarry: mysterious, friendless, and eccentric. Charged with investigating this crime is Ander, once a student of Mr. Wolphram's. As he interviews pupils who both defend and defame their oddball teacher, he must face a story from decades back that he has tried hard to forget. Ander recalls his best friend Danny, who disappeared from their elite English boarding school--a place of routine physical and psychological abuse--at the peak of IRA terror. In the midst of the present murder investigation, racked by suppressed memories, he also discovers something vital about Mr. Wolphram's true character. Combining the momentum of classic crime fiction with the emotional depth of literary fiction, Throw Me to the Wolves explores the harrowing power of the modern media spectacle to distract from acts of ordinary violence, and the power of the ever-present newsfeed to drown out the boundary between truth and fiction. Faced with Wolphram's case, Ander must turn to his own memory, which proves the ultimate source of both mystery and revelation.