Description
From Booklist Park follows his award-winning, politically hard-hitting novel The Truth Commissioner (2008), about the Troubles in Ireland, with a quieter if no less astutely observed story. Three families set off for a long weekend in Amsterdam, and although they are all from Belfast, their backgrounds are completely different. Art professor Alan, newly divorced, is hoping to make a connection with his teenage son, Jack, who has become increasingly withdrawn, by taking him to a Bob Dylan concert. Single-mother Karen, a cleaner working double shifts to pay for her daughter’s wedding, is part of the hen party anticipating the nuptials. And Marion and Richard, the hardworking owners of a garden center, are celebrating Marion’s birthday. Against the beautifully rendered backdrops of Amsterdam’s museums, parks, and squares, all are able to gain new insight into their problems. Alan discovers his son’s musical gifts, Karen realizes that she has sacrificed too much for a daughter who is not very appreciative, and Marion is startled to learn that she has long misread her husband’s intentions. A humane and deeply empathetic writer, Park turns the most ordinary of interactions into a moving story of people’s greatest hopes and fears. --Joanne Wilkinson “This is a novel about people, about feelings, thoughts, and struggles, and Park does an excellent job of developing the characters and making the reader care about them...a humane and touching read.” ― The Library Journal “Remarkable...At once an amalgam of sensitive character studies, Park's newest is also a gorgeous portrait of the Venice of the North.” ― Publishers Weekly “Poetic, hopeful.” ― O Magazine “A humane and deeply empathetic writer, Park turns the most ordinary of interactions into a moving story of people's greatest hopes and fears.” ― Booklist David Park has written eight previous books including The Big Snow , Swallowing the Sun , The Truth Commissioner and, most recently, The Light of Amsterdam . He has won the Authors' Club First Novel Award, the Bass Ireland Arts Award for Literature, the Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize, the American Ireland Fund Literary Award and the University of Ulster's McCrea Literary Award, three times. He has received a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and been shortlisted for the Irish Novel of the Year Award three times. In 2014 he was longlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. He lives in County Down, Northern Ireland. Read more
Features & Highlights
- It is December; Christmas is approaching and the magic of one of Europe's most beautiful cities beckons. A father looks for himself in the past, struggling to deal with a recent divorce, his teenage son in tow. A single, selfless mother accompanies her only daughter and friends for a weekend-long bachelorette party. And a husband treats his wife to a birthday weekend away, somehow heightening her anxieties and insecurities about age, desire, and motherhood.During their brief stay in the city, the confusions and contradictions inherent in their relationships assert themselves in unexpected ways, forcing each couple into a sometimes painful reassessment and a new awareness of the price that love demands. As these people brush against each other in the squares, museums, and parks of Amsterdam, their lives are transfigured in the winter light as they encounter the complexities of love in a city that challenges what has gone before. Tender and humane, elevating the ordinary to something timeless and important,
- The Light of Amsterdam
- is a novel of compassion and rare dignity.
