The Christmas Club by Stephen Price
It is 1988. A motley crew of cynical young urbanites, brought together by a series of strange, thrilling and even dangerous events end up stranded at Christmas in a bleak, run-down house on the isolated Donegal coastline. It seems like a recipe for disaster! But as the landscape reveals its wild charms, and the house reveals its strange history, they become bound in friendship, and as a drunken joke form the Christmas club, promising to return to the Pier House every year. This promise, does not survive the decade, as their subsequent reunion in 1989 ends in jealousy, betrayal and unrequited love. Fast-forward to Christmas 2003. The only couple to have emerged from the original gathering buys the Pier House. They invite the others to a reunion to celebrate their recent wedding, and display their new-found wealth. The intervening years have been kind to some, but not to others. One by one, as the Christmas club slowly reconvenes, middle-aged manners and the gloss of money disguise passions that still run deep - passions that erupt with tragic consequences when the sixth and final member arrives. What unfolds is a story of unrequited love, regret, greed and the bittersweet nature of relationships set to the background of Ireland's economic facelift.
Stephen Price has had a roller-coaster media career. Having previously worked for the BBC, he was Eamon Dunphy's producer on The Last Word at Today FM, one of Ireland's national radio channels. The Christmas Club is his second novel. His first novel, Monkey Man, was published to critical acclaim in 2005, also by New Island.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781905494347 |
| ISBN 10 | 1905494343 |
| Title | The Christmas Club |
| Author | Stephen Price |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | New Island Books |
| Year published | 2006-11-10 |
| Number of pages | 330 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |