The Second Life of Samuel Tyne by Esi Edugyan

The Second Life of Samuel Tyne

Esi Edugyan

A very strange book. A very sad, very bleak view of family life! This is a man who tries so hard to do the right thing and to achieve something with his life. I was quite shocked by the way everything falls apart.

Extract
The house had always had a famished look to it. Even now when Samuel closed his eyes he could see it leaning, rickety and rain-worn, groaning in the wind. For though he'd never once visited it, he believed that strange old mansion must somehow resemble his uncle in its thinness, its severity, its cheerless decay. The house sat in the outskirts of Aster, a town noted for the old-fashioned fellowship between its men .... And for a man like Samuel, whose life lacked intimacy, the town seemed the return to the honest era he longed for. But he knew Maud would never move there, and the twins, for the sake of siding with her, would object in their quiet way.
Parallels
  • A House for Mr Biswas by V S Naipaul
  • Honour Thy Father by Lesley Glaister
  • The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Borrow this book
Violence