Plaguing Jake by Gerald Lynch
Mary McGahern goes off to university from the small town of Leitrim Falls. Mary was mostly schooled at home by a self-taught, highly literate, widower farmer father, which has always made her an oddity. Professor Jake Flynn, nearing retirement, despairs of contemporary higher education in English Literature, which has moved away from reading and studying the best that has been thought and written to viewing literature as valuable only to the extent that it contributes to improving the world. Mary becomes Professor Flynn's student in two courses. The English Department's rare, autographed edition of Joyce's Ulysses is stolen from a display case. Detective Gurmeet finds that Jake Flynn stole the rare edition of Ulysses. While being examined for mental competency in the Princess Diana Mental Health Center, Jake commits suicide. Mary's father is killed in a car accident and she returns home to see to the farm. In equal parts Joyce and Hemmingway, Plaguing Jake heralds a powerful return to literary storytelling and captures and essential Canadian narrative.
Gerald Lynch was born in Ireland, where he frequently visits, and grew up in Canada. Omphalos is his sixth book of fiction. In 2015 Signature Editions published Missing Children, his fifth, the novel that introduced Detective Kevin Beldon. These novels were preceded by Troutstream, Exotic Dancers, and two books of short stories, Kisbey and One's Company. A Professor mainly of Canadian literature at the University of Ottawa (occasionally offering a seminar in contemporary Irish fiction), earlier this year Gerald published the co-edited Alice Munro's Miraculous Art: Critical Essays. He has edited a number of other books and published many short stories, essays, and reviews, and had his work translated into a number of languages. He has also authored two books of non-fiction, Stephen Leacock: Humour and Humanity and The One and the Many: Canadian Short Story Cycles. He has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the gold award for short fiction in Canada's National Magazine Awards.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781998779390 |
| ISBN 10 | 1998779394 |
| Title | Plaguing Jake |
| Author | Gerald Lynch |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | At Bay Press |
| Year published | 2024-06-12 |
| Number of pages | 300 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |