I first discovered Patrick McGrath in 1988 with his often overlooked and under-appreciated short story collection, Blood and Water and Other Tales, and became a huge fan of his from then on. In 1990, I read his best book to date, The Grotesque. Both, are amazing pieces of Gothic fiction. Back in ...
This is the author’s second novel and third book (following on the collection “Blood and Water and Other Tales” and his debut novel “The Grotesque”). At least for the moment, I am reading his works in the order of publication. I thought that the short stories were very good and fit their length...
Clearly demonstrating that it is never too late to embark on the career for which you were intended, Patrick McGrath's first novel, "The Grotesque," was released in May 1989, when its author was pushing 40 years old. Although the Englishman had come out with a volume of shorter pieces earlier tha...
"Port Mungo" pulled me in as soon as I started reading it, and it kept me until about halfway through, but it didn't succeed in doing what it set out to do. For one, the Honduran town of Port Mungo, the setting for only a short part of the book, was not as looming a character as I had expected i...
This was Patrick McGrath's first book, and I actually recall first seeing his writing in some anthologies or literary magazines back in the 1980s. Here he sets out a mixed bag of tales, a few of which are brilliant, and a few which are merely oddities, but still attention-grabbing ones. At his be...
This book is less about the main character, Martha Peake, that it is about what time and human imagination do to alter a person's legacy. Ambrose Tree tries to piece together Martha's life from his uncle William's tainted (or so Ambrose believes) memories and the few fragments of Martha's letter...
I was the only one she talked to about Eddie Castrol but I soon grew impatient with her and then she didn’t confide in me anymore. What a relief that was. Sidney and I had a quiet period. He was busy with his book. I think he was having a good deal of trouble with it. With writers it’s best to le...
It was correct in its broad essential, but it missed the pathos, the tragedy even of the conclusions I myself had reached. After Martha left Drogo Hall Harry sank fast, I believe, which is not surprising, given how little he had to cleave to, those final days. Martha had been his last hope, the o...
I fell into this trap. In fact for some time after the end of my marriage I held fast to this belief, and saw no real reason to challenge it: I was unable to save anything. Even had I wanted to keep my marriage alive I doubt I could have succeeded. The fact was, since I could no longer face Agnes...
Many houses are deserted and from those which are not drift the fumes of preparations intended to protect the living still within. The streets are silent but for the faint wailing of the newly bereaved and the rumbling wheels of the melancholy death-carts hauling their loads to Potter’s Field. In...