Spirit House by Mark Dapin
David is thirteen and confused. His mum has left with her lover and dumped David on his grandparents. David's grandfather, Jimmy, is seventy. He spends his days at the social club grumbling with his three best friends, all of them Jewish-Australian survivors of the enforced labour camps of the WWII Thai-Burma Railroad. But behind their playful backbiting and irresistible wit, Jimmy and his friends are haunted by the ghosts of long-dead comrades, and the only person Jimmy can confide in is a thirteen-year-old from a different world...
A bittersweet story of Burma, Bondi beach and broken lives.. A literary cocktail of rare originality * Sunday Telegraph *
The rewards are all over Spirit House, a little masterpiece of comedy and torment that mines new life from the well-told legend of the Thai-Burma railway of World War II * The Australian 'Books of the Year' *
This is a book destined for classic status in every sense of the word. It is powerful, poignant, moving, tragic and intensely distressing. It is a feast of a story which will almost simultaneously move you to tears and bring a smile to your face. * ABC News *
The rewards are all over Spirit House, a little masterpiece of comedy and torment that mines new life from the well-told legend of the Thai-Burma railway of World War II * The Australian 'Books of the Year' *
Every other week, it seems, a fine new Australian novel is published. Few, however, can equal the vernacular flair, the originality of treatment of matters that we had thought overly familiar and the narrative drive of Mark Dapin's Spirit House... Dapin is funny, poignant, vibrantly witty and his
novel is a treat from its elegiac opening to its bitter, unexpected close.
This is a book destined for classic status in every sense of the word. It is powerful, poignant, moving, tragic and intensely distressing. It is a feast of a story which will almost simultaneously move you to tears and bring a smile to your face. * ABC News *
Mark Dapin was born in Leeds and moved to Australia in the late 1980s. He has been editor-in-chief of ACP's men's magazines, and a hugely popular newspaper columnist. He has degrees in Social Policy, Art History and Journalism. His first novel, King of the Cross, won the Ned Kelly award. Spirit House is his second novel. He lives in Sydney with his partner and two children.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781782390879 |
| ISBN 10 | 1782390871 |
| Title | Spirit House |
| Author | Mark Dapin |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Atlantic Books |
| Year published | 2013-08-01 |
| Number of pages | 368 |
| Prizes | Short-listed for Ondaatje Prize 2014 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |