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Hopdance

By Stewart Parker

Hopdance

By Stewart Parker

0 - Default Title
Description
In a great Irish tradition of autobiographical fiction that includes James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark, Parker's poignant novel depicts events surrounding the amputation of his left leg as a nineteen-year-old university student. Masterful vignettes present the callow protagonist's life before, during and after this ordeal. Belfast, drear locus of rain and despond, contributes to the heaviness at the novel's heart, as its characters strive to rise above the pervasive melancholy of the city and find some human happiness that they can share.
Tosh, Parker's alter-ego, is drifting through life before his cancer diagnosis, plagued by the twin 'cankers' of a puzzling pain in the leg and a crippling loneliness. The amputation forces him into a more authentic relationship with life, which 'Starts with the wound. Ends with the kiss. For the lucky ones.'
This remarkable, posthumously edited work, largely written in the early 1970s, prefigures the skills Parker would demonstrate in his plays: plainspoken and stoical in tone, the emotion seeps through a membrane of numb reserve. The writing is impressionistically vivid, the descriptions of pain and discomfort wholly authoritative. Hopdance is a beautiful, sincere, personal testament by a true artist, a wondrous 'lost treasure' of literature now presented to its reading public.
Product details
Binding:
Paperback
Number of Pages:
178
Release Date:
2017-04-01
Publication Date:
2026-03-27
Publisher:
The Lilliput Press
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
1843517094
ISBN13:
9781843517092
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
223 g
Height:
135 cm
Width:
215 cm
Thickness:
10 cm
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