Geneva Literary Aid Society

The GLAS Hour – Meet the Author: Christine Dwyer Hickey (28.05.2020)

The librarians of Dublin, the city associated with so many great writers, celebrate one book every year – Dublin, One City, One Book. These have included James Joyce’s Dubliners, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Roddy’s Doyle’s Barrytown Trilogy, and Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray. This year they have chosen a modern day classic, Tatty by Christine Dwyer Hickey, our guest this week on the GLAS Hour.

Tatty is a coming-of-age story of a young girl growing up in a family destroyed by alcoholism. It is also a story filled with humour and love. Chapter by chapter, the child’s voice matures and her perception becomes more honed; we are left with a stunning portrait of a disintegrating family and the child lost within it. Christine’s latest novel, The Narrow Land, about the American artist Edward Hopper, has just been published to critical acclaim and shortlisted for several awards including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.

How to join us

Thursday 28 May 2020, 20:00 CEST

You can join the event by clicking the link below before the event begins. It will enable you to download and install the Zoom application, which you can also use to submit questions to the author.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83873667415

We will also stream the event live on our Facebook page.

About Christine Dwyer Hickey

Christine is a novelist, playwright and short story writer. She has published eight novels, one collection of short stories and a full-length play. Christine’s work has been recognised with many awards including Irish Novel of the Year for The Cold Eye of Heaven.

Her latest novel The Narrow Land is set on Cape Cod in 1950 and examines the turbulent marriage of American artists Edward and Jo Hopper. It is already on several short lists for novel of the year including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.

What the criticis said…

Christine Dwyer Hickey’s tale of a very ordinary Dubliner, staring at the close of his life, is the most profound novel I have read for years,” – Steve Davies, Guardian review of Cold Eye of Heaven.

“The Narrow Land is a quiet tour-de-force placing art at the heart of historical fiction. By framing her portrait of the marriage of Edward and Josephine Hopper in one hot summer, 1950, at their house in Cape Cod, Christine Dwyer Hickey captures the intensity and sometime destructiveness of the relationship, and the impact on it when Michael, a child of a concentration camp, comes to stay nearby. The author manages a rare thing: she reveals the impetus of Hopper’s art, writing beautifully about light, angles and shade in an effortless way so that we only gradually, and thrillingly, become aware that we are seeing things as Hopper did.” – judges’ citation for Walter Scott Prize.

A powerfully accomplished work of art,” Joseph O’Connor, Guardian review of Last Train from Liguria

And finally…

These events are free but we would ask those who can afford it to make a donation, however small, to the Edith Wilkins Foundation for Street Children in Darjeeling. Bank details are below.

IBAN: IE48 AIBK 9343 4821 4390 06
BIC: AIB KIE 2D
Account number: 21439006