The flood / by Ian Rankin
2005, New Edition. London : Orion. An exceptional copy; fine in an equally fine dw, now mylar-sleeved. Particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Literally as new.; 205 pages; Physical desc. : xviii, 205 p. ; 24 cm. Previous ed. : Edinburgh: Polygon, 1986. Includes new introduction by the author. Subjects: Fife (Scotland) --Fiction --Crime and mystery. Summary: In 1986, a small Scottish publishing firm released a first novel by a talented young writer. Only a few hundred copies were printed but it was a literary milestone nonetheless. The book was "The Flood". The author was Ian Rankin...Mary Miller had always been an outcast. As a young girl she had fallen into the hot burn - a torrent of warm chemical run-off from the local coal mine. Fished out white-haired and half-dead, sympathy for her quickly faded when the young man who pushed her in died in a mining accident just two days later. From then on she was regarded with a mixture of suspicion and fascination by her God-fearing community. Now, years later she is hardly less alone. She is the mother of a bastard son, Sandy, and caught up in a faltering affair with a local teacher. Sandy, meanwhile, has fallen in love with a strange homeless girl. The search for happiness isn't easy. Both mother and son must face a dark secret from their past, in the growing knowledge that their small dramas are being played out against a much larger canvas, glimpsed only in symbols and flickering images - of decay and regrowth, of fire and water - of the flood. "The Flood" is both a coming-of-age novel and an amazing portrait of a time and place. Proto-Rankin as it is, it's dark, atmospheric and powerful - a remarkable debut from a remarkable author. Item #154754
ISBN: 0752873091
Price: €8.95