An Answer from Limbo

by Brian Moore

Brian Moore’s An Answer From Limbo is a bitter look at the price of success, and how we lie to ourselves about our actions.

Genres: Ireland, Canada

319 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Brian Moore (1921–1999) was born into a large, devoutly Catholic family in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His father was a surgeon and lecturer, and his mother had been a nurse. Moore left Ireland during World War II and in 1948 moved to Canada, where he worked for the Montreal Gazette, married his first wife, and began to write potboilers under various pen names, as he would continue to do throughout the 1950s.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955, now available as an NYRB Classic), said to have been rejected by a dozen publishers, was the first book Moore published under his own name, and it was followed by nineteen subsequent novels written in a broad range of modes and styles, from the realistic to the historical to the quasi-fantastical, including The Luck of Ginger Coffey, An Answer from Limbo, The Emperor of Ice Cream, I Am Mary Dunne, Catholics, Black Robe, and The Statement. Three novels—Lies of Silence, The Colour of Blood, and The Magician’s Wife—were short-listed for the Booker Prize, and The Great Victorian Collection won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

After adapting The Luck of Ginger Coffey for film in 1964, Moore moved to California to work on the script for Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. He remained in Malibu for the rest of his life, remarrying there and teaching at UCLA for some fifteen years. Shortly before his death, Moore wrote, “There are those stateless wanderers who, finding the larger world into which they have stumbled vast, varied and exciting, become confused in their loyalties and lose their sense of home. I am one of those wanderers.”

Reviews

[Sharif Khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read. Brian Moore is a highly skilled writer and a true master of suspense. It's no surprise Hitchcock sought him out to co-write the script for Torn Curtain. Limbo is a deeply suspenseful domestic drama where the struggling writer protagonist plays his own Mephisto - making a Faustian pact with his child-self for literary success. The dark resolution is so viscerally searing, one really feels for the characters.

Moore expertly sets up the story and orchestrates the characters to generate realistic and believable conflict that builds with increasing tension. Limbo is quintessentially a novelist's novel that non-writers will also enjoy for its powerful drama.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brian Moore has never written a bad book. This is not one of his best, but pretty damn good.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gen Z may have something to say to a 29 year old agonising that his moment to make a publishing splash has passed. Married, in a secure job, able to fly his mother over from Ireland to stay at his New York appartment... With hindsight the main problem might be to find a violin small enough. What Moore does capture so well is the timeless peer pressure to succeed in the looking-glass of our contemporaries' endeavours. It's rarely what we have, but how we stack-up to others that can take its psychological toll. On this measure, Brendan Tierney and his wife Jane find agonies enough, as each becomes consumed by their own needs.

As so often in Moore's writing, religion tussles with the secular. Brendan's Catholic mother is the lightning rod when she escapes a solitary widowed life in Ireland to inhabit the blankly sheened modernity of 1960s New York. Moore writes with a soap-writer's verve, while never losing the remarkable clarity and economy of his prose.

I have been waiting for a bad Moore, which given his large output is taking a long while to find. 'An Answer from Limbo' is less well-known in his output, but worth seeking out.

[Nick Bomba · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well we’ll well, what can I say, an absolute wonderful read. I’ve read 3 other Brian Moore books, ( cold heaven, Judith hearne, magicians wife ) and this is IMO the best. The characters are so vivid and alive, it’s like you,ve meet them , whether a relative, in a movie, a work colleague. Brendan the main dude has been full of myself from day one, Jane his wife , you just wanna make love to her thru the whole book and Mrs Tierney ( brendans mum ) is such a delight, and steals the show in the book. The New York setting is perfect, and the book is fast paced, no flat spots.
I don’t wanna give anything away, but jeez, Brian Moore has a way of perfectly capturing characters ( especially woman ) that I’ve never experienced in any other author.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fantastic, intelligent read. The characters spiral downwards towards alienation driven by self-absorption. You read screaming “No. No”.
What a range of reading experience the author must have to be able to write like this. There are so many literary references.
I encountered many words here that I’ve never heard nor seen before eg omphaloskepis p167. There are also many references to (Greek) mythology: Sisyphus p203; Penelope’s loom p8 and more.
This is longer than the other Brian Moore books that I’ve read. It was written in 1962 - his fourth novel. I read it over six days. You read a few pages and you’re drawn in.

[Linda Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a 'bad experience' with Brian Moore a couple of decades ago and haven't given him any consideration since; but was recently persuaded to give him another try. This time he convinced me. I think my younger self took his flawed characters too seriously and blamed the author for the weak female characters. In this domestic drama, I took it more as a 'staged performance' this time, recognising the artfully drawn characters as representative rather than actual - I don't actually have to like them. Builds to a superb ending, with clever use of metaphor throughout. Very enjoyable.

[Patrick Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brendan Tierney is a young Irish writer living in New York City. He is consumed by his ambition to wriie a great novel. He lives with his American wife and their two children. Kis wife must work to support the family. His mother comes over from Ireland to provide child care. The mother disapproves of the household values and morality. Told from several points of view it shows how the writer's unbridled ambition causes his wife to fall out of love with him. A good tale and a watrning to the single minded ambitious.

[Keith Astbury · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Answer from Limbo is essentially a story about three flawed characters, with one at least meaning well. It's beautifully written, too x