What do you think?
Rate this book
The Immaculate Heart
Fourteen-year-old Maggie is obsessed with love; both trying to define it and experience it, thanks to the indifference of her adopted family. After the death of her older sister Trish, Maggie turns to her only friend, eighty-year-old Bertrand, a man driven to madness since losing his sweetheart, Rose, during World War II.
With her mother keeping a constant vigil where Trish was killed and her father maintaining an affair, Maggie is left alone to explore the world of Rose’s letters to Bertrand sent from a remote Scottish island where they had planned to escape the war, and share their love in safety-the love Maggie dreams of.
Through the trail of letters, Maggie pursues Rose, hoping that by finding her she can prove love exists in a broken, cruel world, and find that love and affection we all crave.
An engagingly breathless and superbly constructed fictional exploration of humanity’s oldest pathology – love – with its 14 year-old protagonist as presiding genius. The teenage scenes and the backstory from the Highlands during WW2 are particularly adroitly handled. Laced with a necessary undertaste of strychnine cynicism, the novel awakens – it is fresh, honest. A revelatory novel of freedom of the imagination and a meditation on the tenuousness of sanity. Illuminating, cinematic, ‘The Immaculate Heart’ carries you long into the night. And it hurts.
-Suhayl Saadi, James Black Tait Memorial Award nominee, IMPAC Prize nominee
A compelling, sincere and touching novel. To write a book about enduring love in this time of temporary connections and emotional use-by-dates; to risk the scorn of the fashionistas, is a daunting but important task for modern writers. Drennan is no coward, he has tackled his subject with courage, with commitment and with style. This is a bold new voice, wise before his years.
-Ewan Morrison, author of Swung, Menage.
**** More innovative is Andrew Raymond Drennan’s The Immaculate Heart. [A]
sophomore effort, it marks a substantial leap forward from the young Scottish writer’s debut Cancer Party…a thoughtful and poignant look at the nature of love, as Maggie searches for meaning and affection against a backdrop of heartbreak and loss. Clever without being showy, it’s mature and accomplished writing…Drennan shows real promise for the future.
-The Big Issue
With her mother keeping a constant vigil where Trish was killed and her father maintaining an affair, Maggie is left alone to explore the world of Rose’s letters to Bertrand sent from a remote Scottish island where they had planned to escape the war, and share their love in safety-the love Maggie dreams of.
Through the trail of letters, Maggie pursues Rose, hoping that by finding her she can prove love exists in a broken, cruel world, and find that love and affection we all crave.
An engagingly breathless and superbly constructed fictional exploration of humanity’s oldest pathology – love – with its 14 year-old protagonist as presiding genius. The teenage scenes and the backstory from the Highlands during WW2 are particularly adroitly handled. Laced with a necessary undertaste of strychnine cynicism, the novel awakens – it is fresh, honest. A revelatory novel of freedom of the imagination and a meditation on the tenuousness of sanity. Illuminating, cinematic, ‘The Immaculate Heart’ carries you long into the night. And it hurts.
-Suhayl Saadi, James Black Tait Memorial Award nominee, IMPAC Prize nominee
A compelling, sincere and touching novel. To write a book about enduring love in this time of temporary connections and emotional use-by-dates; to risk the scorn of the fashionistas, is a daunting but important task for modern writers. Drennan is no coward, he has tackled his subject with courage, with commitment and with style. This is a bold new voice, wise before his years.
-Ewan Morrison, author of Swung, Menage.
**** More innovative is Andrew Raymond Drennan’s The Immaculate Heart. [A]
sophomore effort, it marks a substantial leap forward from the young Scottish writer’s debut Cancer Party…a thoughtful and poignant look at the nature of love, as Maggie searches for meaning and affection against a backdrop of heartbreak and loss. Clever without being showy, it’s mature and accomplished writing…Drennan shows real promise for the future.
-The Big Issue
198 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 20, 2011
5 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 5, 2011
Great read. Never saw the twist coming and didn't want it to end. Maggie's a diamond!
Displaying 1 of 1 review