Review
.. PRAISE FOR GLENN PATTERSON'S FICTION .. 'Utterly contemporary, clear-eyed and compassionate: he is the opposite of cliche. (And boy does Ireland need the opposite of cliche.)' Anne Enright 'One of the best contemporary Irish novelists.' Colm Toibin 'Humane, wise, funny, absolutely contemporary. It is exhilarating to see a novel stretching moment by moment, alive to what language brings.' Francis Spufford 'He should be made writer-in-residence to the Stormont Assembly.' Joseph O'Connor
Product Description
At the heart of Once Upon a Hill are the author's grandparents, Jack and Kate, whose sedate old age belies the turmoil of their early life together, and apart - they had to wait ten years to marry. For Glenn Patterson trying to make sense of this small-town life in a family dominated by a formidable matriarch becomes a detective story written against the reluctance of surviving family members to talk and the simple erosion of memory. It becomes, too, a revelation of how much his own life - not least his own mixed marriage - has been shaped by events decades before he was born.
So Once Upon a Hill is part memoir, part all-of-themoir. It is the story of what happens when history tries to squeeze itself into a town of ten thousand people, most of them related somewhere down the line. It is about the consequences of violence and the conditions required for love to survive. It is a story of frailty, fortitude, and finally forgiveness.*
