Violent Shadows

by Marion Urch

It is the year of the Hunger Strikes when Tara returns to Mullinamore. Cut off by mountains and blocked border roads, it is a forgotten place, sparsely populated and remote. Tara, whose family roots there span centuries, arrives from England to find that an outsider had encroached. When she meets Felix, then uncovers a family secret, the past erupts in to the present in dangerous and unexpected ways.

213 pages, Hardcover

First published October 20, 1996

About the author

Marion Urch is an award winning video artist and novelist, with an MA from the Royal College of Art in London. Both her novels Violent Shadows and An Invitation to Dance were published to critical acclaim: the latter has been translated into Russian and German. She has also published a number of short stories and has credits for radio and television

"My childhood was a flicker book of people and places: a children’s home run by nuns, the grounds of a Victorian military hospital, a merchant house outside the ancient city of Mdina in Malta, a brand new housing estate in York. In between times, the family spent long summers in rural Leitrim, in the North West of Ireland. Moving around a lot, I caught glimpses of other lives, other identities, other versions of myself I might have been. "

Reviews

[Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://gnomeship.blogspot.com/2016/10...

[Jes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was maybe more like 3.75 stars. It was sort of heavy-handed at times -- Urch has this habit of constructing these taut, breathless scenes and then immediately destroying the effect by telling you outright what you were supposed to take from the scene. I didn't look her up but would not be surprised to learn she was an academic or an English teacher. That said, I enjoyed this quite a bit and I thought some of it was very well done. I need to think a little more about it but I could see it being a fascinating book to teach, esp in an Irish/Northern Irish lit class.