Joseph O’Neill’s grandfathers—one Irish, one Turkish—were both imprisoned during World War II. His Irish grandfather was a member of the IRA who was interned with his comrades by the British. His other grandfather, from the Turkish Christian minority, was jailed by the British in Palestine. An il...
In this witty first novel, the ordinary confronts the romantic with darkly hilarious results. Solicitor James Jones wryly recounts a year spent unraveling the mysteries of his glamorous international lawyer-client's complicated private life and realizes that there are no faily-tale existences--on...
The lady is asleep, mouth open, nose upturned, lightly snoring. The man has cast aside his newspaper and is staring dispiritedly out of the window, his shoulder leaning against the side of the carriage. He has abandoned his coffee-stained letter of complaint, which lies crumpled on the floor, the...
Mrs Somerville said to her husband, ‘Perhaps that’s one of the boys coming to see you’ – the boys, in this case, being the young men of the locality who dropped by to ask the Admiral’s help in joining the British navy. ‘I’ll go and see,’ the Admiral said. He rose to his feet to receive the visito...
IT WAS SURPRISINGLY uncomplicated to arrange for a transfer to London and to start up again, this time in a corner office that permits me, depending on which way I spin my chair, to admire St. Paul’s Cathedral or the Gherkin. Of course, it felt strange to be back. In the first week I was sitting ...
As might be expected, this decision initially aggravated the problem of inefficiency. There was the bungling associated with a new endeavor, and there was the exhaustion brought on by over-watching the films of Jacques Cousteau. And yet, once I’d completed advanced scuba training and a Fish Ident...