Hardcover. London, Harvill Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a translucent dust jacket, 165 pages. Illustrated with Steve Pyke's b&w photographs. SIGNED BY BOTH O'GRADY AND PYKE on the title page. Stranded in a dismal flat in England, the protagonist remembers his happy childhood in Ireland, the rough living and working conditions in England, and his only love. The language is quite simple and often Hiberno Irish, but deeply imaginative and so lyrical, that the line between prose and poetry gets blurred. The beautiful black/white pictures added to this book, and the author's ability to portray Irish music help to give an insight into Irish culture. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 273 pages. Hardcover. SIGNED BY AUTHOR. Decked foreedge. Teal fabric covered, Very clean inside and out. Review from back cover, "There's a cast of characters worthy of a modern-day Shakespeare; bathetic descriptions of using the lavatory that would have had Beckett smiling; and the gods' playful pursuit of women that could be lifted straight from Ovid's The Art of Love. Banville, already esteemed for the brilliance of his language, proves in this novel to have a mastery, too, of these many colliding universes."
NY, Lincoln MacVeagh. Dial Press, 1st US, 1924, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt lettering on spine and vignette on front cover, 290 pages. A Story of Northern Ireland before the Revolution. Rich in humor and humanity, it was one of the six novels chosen, out of thousands by Harrap, the English publisher for a cash prize. The green cloth has discoloration, washed out splotches mostly to rear cover and part of spine. The interior is clean, binding tight.