Mr. Lynch's Holiday
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A sophisticated and touching novel of a father and son reconnecting in a foreign place, from the award-winning and bestselling author of What Was Lost
Retired bus driver and recent widower Dermot Lynch grabs his bags from the bus's dusty undercarriage and begins to climb the hill to his son's house. It is Dermot's first time in Spain and the first time he's been out of Birmingham in many years. When he finally arrives at the gates of the crumbling development, Dermot learns that Eamonn, only one of a handful of settlers in the half-finished ghost town of Lomaverde, has fallen prey to an alluring vision and is upside down in a dream that is slipping away.
But Dermot finds something beautiful and nostalgic in Lomaverde's decline—something that is reminiscent of his childhood in Ireland. Soon he is the center of attention in the tiny group of expats where paranoid speculation, goat hunting, and drinking are just some of the ways to pass the days. As the happenings in Lomaverde take a strange turn, father and son slowly begin to peel back their pasts, and they uncover a shocking secret at the heart of this ad hoc community.
With the depth, grace, and wry authenticity that have characterized Catherine O'Flynn's previous work, Mr. Lynch's Holiday gives us a story that again shimmers with "the power of good old realism" (Jane Smiley, The LA Times) about love, connection, and a father and son finding each other exactly when they need it most.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Eamonn Lynch is recently separated from his longtime girlfriend Laura and is living alone in the couple's rundown condo in the ramshackle real-estate development of Lomaverde, Spain. About the last person he expects to see there is his father, Dermot, who's on a fortnight's holiday from Birmingham, England. Dermot, hoping for a change of scene following his wife's death and his recent retirement from his job as a bus driver, finds himself drawn to the dilapidated area, which reminds him of the Ireland of his childhood. Much to Eamonn's discomfort, Dermot is embraced by the other Lomaverde residents, British expatriates who feel trapped and resentful over being stuck with worthless property following Spain's economic downturn. O'Flynn (What Was Lost) skillfully balances absurdity with pathos, both in Eamonn's particular situation and in that of Lomaverde itself. Lomaverde, which one character calls "a place where you can admit to mistakes you have no choice but to," offers father and son the chance to repair themselves, if not their surroundings. Like her characters, O'Flynn has an eye for the beauty to be found amid squalor and chaos.
