The Heat of the Sun

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

When recently orphaned Woodley Sharpless encounters Ben Pinkerton - known to all as 'Trouble' - for the first time at the exclusive Blaze Academy, he is instantly enraptured. They are polar opposites; Ben is exotic and daring; Woodley is bookish and frail, yet their lives quickly become inextricable intertwined. First at school, then in the staccato days of twenties New York, Woodley sees flashes of another person in his friend and slowly discovers a side of Ben's nature that belies a dark and hidden history. Over the coming years, through depression and warfare, change in both their lives, their relationship and their suffering, stand for a generation; one dispersed by depression and upheaval, brutality and confusion. David Rain's The Heat of the Sun, is an ambitious and assured novel that captures perfectly two friends, two loves: two lives.

Reviews

This book is a thing of beauty: Rain constructs the story like an opera libretto, with an overture, four acts and an intermission. Swinging through the decades, intermingling cultural and political developments, Rain is subtle and assured, a writer of unquestionable talent. Do yourself a favour and read this wonderful book now. * Irish Times *
Wildly inventive * New York Times *
There are passages in the novel that have a heartbreaking beauty... Rain is a talented writer * Washington Post *
This book captures the gaiety and tumult of a troubled age. But it is ultimately a novel of friendship, of love, and of lives. * Irish Examiner *
David Rain is far too young to be writing this exquisitely... a story about the universal search for love and for self... There isn't so much an echo of Scott Fitzgerald in these pages as a gentle background refrain * The Bookbag *
Rain's worthy novel is a touching, often searing tale of friendship, betrayal and love. His flawed characters are staggering beneath the weight of the past, which they carry like burdens even beyond the book's chilling, operatic conclusion. * Bookpage *
Mesmerising... The Heat of the Sun is by turns wildly colourful and straitlaced, witty and rueful, reserved and operatic -- Andrew Solomon, author of 'The Noonday Demon' and 'Far From the Tree'
Romantic tragedy inside a story of great theatrical invention and whimsy. The result is wholly original and a lot of fun. Read it and the twentieth century may never look the same to you again -- John Burnham Schwartz, author of 'Reservation Road' and 'The Commoner'

Author Bio

David Rain is an Australian writer who lives in London. He has taught literature and writing at Queen's University of Belfast, University of Brighton, and Middlesex University, London.