Backlist beauties—in brief
It’s not all about what’s new or what’s next. In this series publishers and booksellers tell us in brief about beauties from the backlist.
First up is The Lilliput Press, with Between Dog and Wolf, by Elske Rahill.
What we love about this book:
Elske Rahill is the best new Irish writer who has flown under the radar. This was the first novel in the genre of Irish university life years before the Sally Rooney phenomenon.
She is ahead of the game.
‘Elske Rahill is a brilliant bloody writer—gossamer-light prose laced with nuclear-tipped torpedoes.’ – Rosita Sweetman
A little flavour of what’s inside
‘You need a little hypocrisy in you,’ he told me more than once.’You need to be a little tainted if you are not to be corrupted altogether.’
The French call it entre chien et loup . . . Darkly moving, often shocking, this interwoven story follows three college students, desperately searching for a place between the familiar and the strange as they careen towards self- knowledge.
Cassandra, volatile and scarred by loss, has been sculpted by the bohemian high life and then discarded. Oisín, a country boy pulsing with sexual aggression, is prone to equal flights of rage and compassion.
And you, Helen.
Helen, who takes these two fractured lives and dashes them against herself, creating ripples that twist and distort their images of what should be.
In this stunning debut novel, each character forces the boundaries of normality, negotiating the chasms of their own violent sexuality and decay.
A line that sings
‘Love, real love is so rare,’ he says. ‘Love: what a mad and complex and stupid and absolutely fundamental part of our thinking. Aren’t we fools to believe in logic when the most basic beliefs are founded on feeling, on the blind choice of light over dark, God over Satan, pleasure over pain?’
Cover designer
Graham Thew at Graham Thew Design
