You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Oldcastle Books has secured The Book of the Gaels, a “beautiful, lyrical” novel from James Yorkston.
Publisher Ion Mills acquired world English language rights from Jim Gill at United Agents. The Book of the Gaels will be published on 29th September 2022.
Yorkston is a singer-songwriter and author and his latest album with Second Hand Orchestra, “The Wide, Wide River”, was named as one of the Guardian’s top 10 folk albums of the year in 2021.
“As a long time admirer of James’ music and fan of his debut novel Three Craws (Freight Books), I am delighted to be publishing James’ second novel,” Mills said. “He has an astonishing ear for storytelling and The Book of the Gaels is suffused with melodious, vivid prose. The heartbreaking story of Joseph and Paul and their father Fraser will remain with you long after you close the last page.”
Yorkston’s latest novel draws on his musical inspiration and childhood summers spent in West Cork examining “paralysing pain of grief and loss, tempered only by the hope of rescue and the redemption of parental love”.
The publisher wrote: “The Book of the Gaels tells the story of young Joseph and his brother Paul - living semi-neglected, grieving their mother, sheltering in the make-believe; until their struggling father – an aspiring poet – receives a letter with a summons to Dublin and the promise of publication. It offers a chink of light and the hope of rescue. But Dublin is a long, wet and hungry way from West Cork, especially when you have no money – just the clothes they stand up in, and a battered suitcase containing one clean shirt and a sheaf of flimsy typewritten pages.”
Yorkston commented: “This is it, this is The Book of The Gaels, a story that’s been with me for years... It took me a while to write it down, then a while longer to send it out into the world. I’m very pleased it was welcomed so warmly by Oldcastle, and of their help passing on the story of Joseph and Paul; twa brave wee lads.”