Tanglewood
Tanglewood
Publisher’s Synopsis
‘Phone the cops or phone Alice. But just don’t expect life to ever be the same after you make that call…’
When two neighbouring Dublin couples decide to cooperate in building a townhouse that straddles both of their gardens, they have no idea that the journey they embark on will expose the faultlines within their relationships and result in a panicked decision one night when the two husbands, Chris and Ronan, are confronted by a moral dilemma. The consequences of their actions cast these law-abiding men adrift into unknown territory propelled into a new moral landscape where it seems impossible to turn back.
Written by a master story-teller, Tanglewood grows into an incisive dissection of Ireland in 2007, when – although these characters are unaware of it – the Celtic Tiger edifice is quietly imploding. It is bitter-sweet examination of the simmering tensions, intolerable strains and unbreakable bonds of memory and love that can simultaneously exist within marriage.
Publication details and Rights
Tanglewood is published in paperback and on kindle by New Island, published in French as “Ensemble Séparés” by Editions Joelle Losfeld and is also published in Bulgarian. All rights enquiries should be directed to Edwin Higel, Publisher, edwin.higel@newisland.ie or Mariel Deegan, General Manager, mariel.deegan@newisland.ie
To purchase a copy click http://newisland.ie/product/tanglewood/
Reviews
Tanglewood is an outstanding piece of work by one of our most mature and courageous writers, one who is unafraid to hack his way through the tangles of contemporary Irish life and write a rare thing in Irish fiction: a serious state-of-the-nation novel.
An absorbing meditation on marriage, masculinity, parenting and the general anxieties of the middle class… Bolger approaches these variegated lives with a wisdom that contrasts sharply with the benightedness of those he depicts. On every page, insight and illumination are found, as might be expected from one of Ireland’s most perceptive writers.
Dermot Bolger’s Tanglewood is a superb novel about the implosion not only of the economy in the mid-2000s, but the implosion of marriage and morality and memory too. Bolger does it masterfully, as always. He has been prying open the Irish ribcage since he was 16 years old. With Tanglewood all his talents are on display…Pound for pound, word for word, I’d have Bolger represent us in any literary Olympics.
Only a writer of Bolger’s precision and suppleness could wade back through the nation’s self-loathing into that mess and mine new truths, treasures to be heeded and learned from…Bolger isn’t meditating on regret, love, moral fibre, greed and carpe diem – he’s setting the record straight on them…This is storytelling that flows deep and soundly, and brims with a hard-earned wisdom…sublime.
Bolger is a witty and sensitive writer…who has always been attuned to social issues…Bolger writes about love and grief particularly well, and it is refreshing to see such an open portrait of the sexual lives if each of the characters, from menopausal Alice to lesbian Sophie, from sexually shy Chris to sexually rampant Ronan…Tanglewood makes a critical contribution to contemporary Irish fiction of the post-boom period.
Bolger is a gifted storyteller and prose stylist…a gripping, well-observed examination of the corrosive effects of greed on love, relationships and families.
Tanglewood is an impressive feat by an author fearlessly interrogating one of the most traumatic moments in recent Irish history. It’s a mirror to an age when the party ended.