Gone, A Novel

In this erotic, emotional debut novel, a young man is torn between two cities, two cultures, and two women.

Disillusioned with his marriage to the controlling Ursula, shattered by the death of his sister, and unsettled by the vandals threatening the security of his home, Stephen, a young Dubliner, moves to New York hoping to make a clean start.

He is quickly swept up in an affair with Holfy, a fiercely independent woman fifteen years his senior, but before long finds himself living a divided life, unable to break his ties to Ursula, Dublin, and the past. The obsessive, intensely erotic bond with Holfy soon begins to fray, and Stephen is forced to face himself and to unravel an identity-and a home-that no longer seems to exist.

Navigating a rocky journey through the labyrinth of death, desire, and the fickleness of truth, Gone combines raw emotion and sensuality with Joycean lyricism. It confirms the arrival of an exciting new talent.

Born and raised in Dublin, Martin Roper received an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. He teaches writing at the University of Iowa's Irish Writing Program at Trinity College, Dublin, and at University College, Dublin. Gone is his first novel.