Forever - Softcover

Hamill, Pete

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0751535370 ISBN 13: 9780751535372

Publisher: Sphere, 2004

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of Snow in August and A Drinking Life comes this magical, epic tale of an extraordinary man who arrives in New York City in 1740 and remains...forever.

From the shores of Ireland, Cormac O'Connor sets out on a fateful journey to avenge the deaths of his parents and honor the code of his ancestors. His quest brings him to the settlement of New York, seething with tensions between English and Irish, whites and blacks, British and "Americans," where he is swept up in a tide of conspiracy and violence. In return for aiding an African shaman who was brought to America in chains, Cormac is given an otherworldly gift: He will live forever -- as long as he never leaves the island of Manhattan.

Cormac comes to know all the buried secrets of Manhattan -- the way it has been shaped by greed, race, and waves of immigration, by the unleashing of enormous human energies, and above all, by hope.

Through it all, Cormac must fight a force of evil that returns relentlessly in the scions of a single family whose path first crossed his in Ireland. As he searches out these blood enemies, he must watch everyone he touches slip away. And so he seeks the one who can change his fate, the mysterious dark lady who alone can free him from the blessing and the curse of his long life.

Drawing on Pete Hamill's bone-deep knowledge of New York City, Forever is his long-awaited masterpiece, a Shakespearean evocation of the mysteries of time and death, sex and love, character and place. It is both an unforgettable drama and a timeless triumph of storytelling.

About this title

About the Author:

Pete Hamill is for many the living embodiment of New York City. In his writing for the New York Times, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, The New Yorker, and New York Newsday, he has invented the city in words for millions of readers. He is the author of previous bestselling books including, most recently, the novel Snow in August and the memoir A Drinking Life. He lives in New York City.

From AudioFile:

From the first plaintive, languorous sounds of a wind instrument, the canvas opens wide on a cultural struggle--on the intertwined history of a nation and a city--and on a robust adventure tale enveloped in myth. Hamill's saga covers a writer-artist's life well lived over four centuries, from the great good Irish house of his infancy to the canyons and towers of his adulthood in present-day New York City. It's a sprawling epic of ven-geance, whose various strands and themes are carefully balanced in this abridgment. Giving a gentle Irish lilt to the dialogue and effortlessly assuming the vocal patterns of other languages and genders, Stevie Ray Dallimore entices the listener as the drama shifts from swashbuckling tale to urban chronicle and as reality and fantasy blend. Hamill's personal insights into his work and his life, intoned on the final disc, offer a meaningful coda to his story. M.J.B. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Sphere
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0751535370
• ISBN 13: 9780751535372
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 624