Torn Water

(Paperback)

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Set in his native Northern Ireland, John Lynch's debut novel is a lyrically told and exquisitely tender story of innocence and loss.
He remembers when he was very young standing by waterHow he had got there or where the pond was he couldnt remember, but he can vaguely recall a larger hand on his and being led through the high rooms of a large building, to a large garden, where bees wove dozy patterns in the air. At the bottom of this garden lay the large pond, and he remembers a face bending to meet his and whispering that he would be back in a little while. So he stood where he had been left, his small feet pointing at the stonework of the ponds rim. He remembers a wind brewing in the tops of the trees and tearing at the water of the pond for a moment, before subsiding, his face blurring into focus like a TV channel being tuned.

When James Lavery's father is blown to bits by a bomb he intended to maim and kill others with, the boy keeps him alive in his imagination as a superhero, escaping the daily grind of school, his mother's drinking and his own acute loneliness by inventing extraordinary adventures for them both. But, gradually, through the agonies of adolescence James begins to understand the real cost of his father's weak and deluded heroism.

It is only when he falls in love himself, during a summer away from his tortured home life, that James finally begins to understand the true complexities of love, life and death

Reviews

'A tale of great delicacy and originality, in which the fierce intensity of adolescence and, even more, the paranoia and yearning of childhood are evoked with precision, grace and overwhelming conviction.' Independent on Sunday '"Torn Water" has the tight tone and feel of the period it depicts and captures well the uncertainties of someone leaving the capsule of childhood behind and taking their first footsteps out into the vast unknown where there are no certainties and no ghosts or angels to guide you.' Irish Sunday Independent 'You get the beat of a writer's heart all the way through the book.' Jennifer Johnston 'Singularly inventive...Lynch clearly has both the wit and seriousness to plumb the mind of the young Irish male. He is now a man to as closely watch on paper as on screen.' Irish Times 'Near perfect miniature' Guardian

Author Bio

John Lynch is a successful film, television and stage actor. Torn Water is his first novel. He lives in France.