The Mangan Inheritance

Moore's suave, ample professionalism is the saving grace of this lightweight, rather contrived Search-for-identity novel. Jamie Mangan, 36, only a young Canadian cub reporter and poet when he first met and married film star Beatrice Abbot years ago, is left with all her considerable monies after she's killed in a car crash (along with the man she'd only recently left Jamie for). After all these years of being Mr. Beatrice Abbot, as well as a cuckold, Jamie is sorely in need of an ego-transplant. Then, on a visit home to Montreal after Beatrice's death, he finds among his father's possessions some Mangan family documents, including a photograph of James Clarence Mangan, a 19th-century Irish versifier popularly considered "Europe's first poete maudite" - and, astoundingly, the spitting image of Jamie himself. So, newly wealthy and independent, Jamie hies himself off to Ireland in search of this new avenue of personal identity. In the little town of Dinshane, he finds Mangans aplenty, but of two separate black sheep and white. It takes the rest of the book to figure out the origins of this discrepancy in behavior and outlook, ending in a revelation of incest, past gruesome injuries, and madness - pure hokum, but for the fact that Moore waltzes you so smoothly into it. Appreciate the narrative savoir-faire; enjoy even the shamelessly sentimental ending; but don't expect much grab or impact from this stylish roots-digging trifle.

'The Mangan Inheritance is a marvellous book. The storytelling is faultless and I have read no book recently that had in greater measure that quality for which no superior word need be sought but "unputdownability"... a superb product of the imagination.' - Paul Ableman, Spectator

'A passionately detailed and evocative work ... what's exceptionally good is the way it sustains the powerful, simple idea of the quest inside the worrying, edgy details of a modern life.' - Hermione Lee, Observer

'Brian Moore is a highly intelligent writer who has the enviable ability to make you want to go on turning the pages.' - A. N. Wilson, Evening Standard

'Moore is one of the boldest and most inventive contemporary novelists.' - Literary Review