First Light

Ackroyd, Peter

ISBN 10: 0802134815 / ISBN 13: 9780802134813

Published by New York, NY, U.S.A.: Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated, 1996, New York, NY, U.S.A., 1996

About this Item

ISBN:0802134815. VG in glossy illustrated wrappers, as issued. Trade paperback. 328 pp. Covers lightly rubbed. Red remainder mark. Last few pages lightly creased. Spine square, tight, uncreased. Interior very clean. No marks. Very bright, clean copy.

Seller Inventory # 3654

Bibliographic Details

• Title: First Light
• Publisher: New York, NY, U.S.A.: Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated, 1996, New York, NY, U.S.A.
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802134815
• ISBN 13: 9780802134813
• Binding: Soft cover
• Seller catalogs:
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About this title

Synopsis

First Light begins with an ominous coincidence: the reappearance of the ancient night sky during the excavation of an astronomically aligned Neolithic grave in Dorset. A group of eccentrics — archaeologists, astronomers, local rustics, a civil servant, and a stand-up comic — converge on the site, disturbing the quiet seclusion of Pilgrin Valley. Someone (or something) is trying to sabotage the best efforts of the excavators, headed by Mark Clare, to unearth the dormant secrets of the burial ground. Meanwhile, at the nearby observatory, astronomer Damien Fall, his telescope focused on the red star Aldebaran, is unnerved by the deeper significance he imputes to the celestial sophistication of the region's ancient inhabitants. And Joey Hanover, a retired music hall and TV entertainer searching for his own past, has learned secrets from Farmer Mint and his son, Boy, the weirdly cryptic guardians of their ancestral home in the valley. All is masterfully woven into an immensely engaging and entertaining novel, a suspenseful reflection on life, nature, and the cosmos, and above all an illuminating and enchanting story.

Review

First Light is not the darkest of Peter Ackroyd's novels (Hawksmoor has that honor), but fans of the macabre will relish its exhilarating combination of cosmic awe, ancient beings, and creepy underground tunnels, in a humorous suspense story as cleverly paced as a Hitchcock thriller. The story is that the excavation of a neolithic, astronomically aligned grave under the pastoral hills of Dorset, England, coincides with the startling reappearance of ancient stars (including H. P. Lovecraft's Aldebaran) in the night sky. A group of deliciously eccentric characters--archaeologists, astronomers, a stuffy civil servant, a stand-up comic, and vaguely menacing local villagers--converge at the site and collide with each other. As Gabriele Annan wrote in the London Sunday Telegraph, "Ackroyd is such a master of mood, of tension, angst, foreboding, frisson, but also of tenderness and exultation, that one is drawn into his tale as by a magus."