Synopses & Reviews
After fifty years of marriage in the same Dublin suburb, Dick and Lily Butler enjoy a "safe" life of compromise, of small and loving concessions to each other. Then one night their happy, balanced world is upended forever, when Lily wakes to find Dick under the bed, holding a shotgun, convinced there's an intruder in the house.
This darkly comic incident marks Dick's terrifying plunge into insanity, his freefall into a world of imaginary enemies and sexual fantasies. For Lily, an old-fashioned wife who has accepted her partner for better or worse, there is nowhere to turn. Now, for the first time, she finds herself unable to follow where her husband leads and is utterly disoriented by this freedom. She is forced to confront the rock face of marriage; having been bound together, she and Dick are now marooned together.
Part thriller, part love story, part macabre comedy, Beloved Stranger is also an analysis of marriage at the end of the millennium a changeless institution in a vastly altered world.
Review
"This rich, compelling novel is a domestic tragicomedy in which the details are as crucial as in a mystery story....As in John Bayley's Elegy for Iris, Boylan's scrutiny of the intimate details and travails of an enduring marriage gives depth and vitality to an engrossing story, the basis for which Boylan found in her own father's mental illness." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Boylan tells this story with such delicacy and sound good sense that it's exhilarating to read even in its darkest and most agonizing moments. She is a deft technician with an ear for the offbeat, compelling metaphor, and a real feeling for human emotions, both pleasant and not. Lovely, deeply felt fiction, with a subterranean vein of wry humor that helps make bearable even its most pained moments." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Although the story has promise, Boylan tries too hard to explore what it means to be a wife....However, when not trying to make deep social statements, Boylan tells a touching story of a woman who discovers life after marriage." Carolyn Kubisz, Booklist
Review
"Clare Boylan's sixth novel transcends several genres. It's a wrenching, at times comic depiction of a marriage shattered by madness, but it's also a love story....Boylan's writing is moving and poetic, while also rich in sardonic humor." Jean Reynolds, Newsday
Review
"The author takes smart and vivid account of the swirling ups and downs of circumstance and emotion....Now and then Ms. Boylan introduces too many shifts and nuances at the same time....[Her excellent hard work] has been to submit her characters grievously, comically, exhilaratingly by turns to their own free and unpredictable spirits." Richard Eder, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"With a title smacking of Harlequin romance and a plot line worthy of playwright Harold Pinter, this is a surprisingly understated drama....This is an endearing novel, both mature and confident." Elizabeth Kiem, Book Magazine
Review
"Irish author Boylan's writing plumbs the inner workings of marriage, family dynamics, women's roles, and the terrors of mental illness. Her characters are authentic and painfully convincing. Recommended." Library Journal
Review
"Wry humor, perceptiveness, and superb craftsmanship...a deeply moving comparison of an old-fashioned marriage with its modern equivalents." Harpers & Queens
About the Author
Clare Boylan is the author of six novels and three collections of short stories. She lives outside Dublin, Ireland.