Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan

Author(s): Ruth Gilligan

Fiction

1901. Cork can sound very similar to New York to foreign ears and tired brains, so it's no surprise that Ruth's family - Jewish refugees fleeing the European pogroms - mistakenly disembark from their boat to America a few stops and a few countries too soon. Still, her father can spin a story like pure silk, so surely Ireland's just a layover till he writes his great play and they can continue their journey west. 1958. He's still not spoken. It's been years since Shem was struck mute at his bar mitzvah, forcing his mother to hand him over to the care of Catholic nuns. There aren't too many of his kind in Ireland let alone in the sanatorium, so it's a lonely existence, but at least his secret is safely locked up in his mouth and kept behind closed doors, where it can never hurt the one person he loves. 2013. Aisling came to London to escape the Irish recession and concentrate on her career, not to fall in love with a part-time magician. She would marry him in a heartbeat, if only his family didn't insist that the ceremony should be performed by a rabbi. Unsure whether to give up her own heritage for some else's, Aisling looks to the past - from a rootless girl who never saw America to an outcast boy who never spoke again - to see if she can decide on her future.


Product Information

A gorgeous and inventive literary novel about putting down roots in unfamiliar soil; about falling in love so deep that it is impossible to climb back out again; and about how tradition and tales are born, nurtured and handed from one generation to the next.

Ruth Gilligan is an Irish novelist and journalist. She has written three previous novels: Forget, which reached number one on the Irish Bestsellers' List when she was 19, making her the youngest person in Ireland ever to have done so, and Somewhere In Between and Can You See Me, both published while she was still at university. She writes and reviews for the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the TLS and the Guardian.

General Fields

  • : 9781782398578
  • : Atlantic Books
  • : Atlantic Books
  • : 0.39
  • : May 2016
  • : 210mm X 148mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : July 2016
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Ruth Gilligan
  • : Paperback
  • : Export/Airside
  • : en
  • : 336