White City

- Blurb -

From the highly acclaimed author of Bad Day in Blackrock - inspiration for the 2012 award-winning film What Richard Did, directed by Lenny Abrahamson - comes a darkly funny, gripping and profoundly moving novel about a life spinning out of control, a life live without the bedrock of familial love, and the corruption of material wealth that tears at the soul. ' It was my father' s arrest that brought me here, although you could certainly say that I took the scenic route. ' Here is rehab, where Ben - the only son of a rich South Dublin banker - is piecing together the shattered remains of his life. Abruptly cut off, at the age of 27, from a life of heedless privilege, Ben flounders through a world of drugs and dead-end jobs, his self-esteem at rock bottom. Even his once-adoring girlfriend, Clio, is at the end of her tether. Then Ben runs into an old school friend who wants to cut him in on a scam: a shady property deal in the Balkans. The deal will make Ben rich and, at one fell swoop, will deliver him from all his troubles: his addictions, his father' s very public disgrace, and his own self-loathing and regret. Problems solved. But something is amiss. For one thing, the Serbian partners don' t exactly look like fools. (In fact they look like gangsters. ) And, for another, Ben is being followed everywhere he goes. Someone is being taken for a ride. But who? Praise for Bad Day in Blackrock: ' Kevin Power is an author of magnificent control, stirring the deepest compassion with restless anger in this piercing contemporary novel' Frank McGuinness ' It' s an excellent novel. . . It comes from the gut, it' s raw, it' s passionate and it suggests. . . that there are a group of young Irish novelists about to be set loose on the world like a pack of hungry wolves. Bring ' em on, I say. I' ll read them' John Boyne, author of The Boy in Striped Pyjamas ' This novel marks the debut of a deeply moral and probing writer - and a potentially great one' Sunday Post (Ireland)