Synopses & Reviews
With
Death of an Ordinary Man, Glen Duncan continues his penetrating and innovative exploration of the supernatural with a novel that is far and away his most powerful and accomplished yet. Nathan Clark's gravestone offers a short and hopeful summary: At rest. But Nathan is not at rest, and knows he won't be until he finds out why he died.
Privy now to the innermost thoughts and feelings of his family and friends confessions that are raw, brutal, and unexpected Nathan spends the day of his wake getting to know the living as he has never known them before: His father struggles with a legacy of family tragedy; his wife with the baggage of a doomed affair; his older daughter with her burgeoning sexuality and adolescent confusion. But why isn't Nathan's young daughter Lois at the wake? Who are the two strangers at the funeral, and why does their presence fill him with dread?
Part detective story, part family portrait, Death of an Ordinary Man is an unflinching look at the margins of human experience, where the boundaries of fundamental feelings love, grief, desire, shame, and hope meet and mingle, and no motivation is as simple as it seems.
Review
"In this superb, uncoercively moving novel, the afterlife is the place where thinking is all that's left to us, which makes it both heaven and hell." Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Duncan's portrayal of the afterlife is refreshingly unsentimental, and he has plenty of talent to spare on the highs, lows, and everyday frustrations of family life, but it's hard even so for the attention not to wander." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[Duncan] has produced an arresting story, and he writes convincingly and affectingly of the consequences of a child's death, which is pretty rare indeed." Library Journal
Review
"Stories narrated by the dead have been popular of late...but Duncan uses the device in a new way: to explore the extremes of human behavior and emotion. His Catholic sensibility informs this powerful, unflinching, and frequently dazzling meditation on the kind of courage it takes to endure the unthinkable." Booklist (Starred Review)
Synopsis
I Lucifer established Glen Duncan as a writer up there in the literary stratosphere with Martin Amis or T. C. Boyle” (Washington Post). Now with Death of an Ordinary Man, Duncan continues his penetrating and innovative exploration of the supernatural with a novel that is far and away his most powerful and accomplished yet.
Nathan Clarks gravestone offers a short and hopeful summary: At rest. But Nathan is not at rest, and knows he wont be until he finds out why he died. How has he come to hover over his own funeral, a spectral spectator to the grief of his family and friends? Privy now to their innermost thoughts and feelings confessions that are raw, brutal, and unexpected Nathan spends the day of his wake getting to know the living as he has never known them before: His father struggles with a legacy of family tragedy; his wife and best friend with the baggage of a doomed affair; his older
Exclusive Essay
Read an exclusive essay by Glen Duncan