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Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung
Set in Ireland and New York, a debut novel about an affair and its explosive consequences--the sins of the father visited on the son in unexpected and irreversible ways
Outside an east Belfast mission hall, pastor and family man Samuel Orr meets Anna, a young Beckett scholar. They embark on an intense, passionate affair, their connection fueled by their respective love of Christ and Beckett. When Anna falls pregnant the affair is revealed. The repercussions are slow to emerge but inescapable, and the fallout when it finally comes is shocking, cruel, and violent.
Over thirty years later Sam, their son, is in New York, living a steady, guarded life, his childhood and family safely abandoned. But the sins of the fathers are visited often on their children, and the past crashes into his life as violently as in his youth. He is forced to confront the fears he has kept close all these years.
The First Day is the story of an affair and its consequences--on family and on faith. It is an intense, questioning novel of the search to understand our origins and to free ourselves from the burdens of our early years. It's a stunning debut, meditative and compelling, incantatory, at times devastating and always mesmerizing.
Rezensionen (4)
Publisher's Weekly-Rezension
Harrison's deeply disturbing, morally challenging first novel opens as Samuel Orr, a married Belfast preacher, falls headlong into a love affair with Anna, a young poet and student of Samuel Beckett. Orr is a man of profound faith and Anna is a thoughtful scholar. Each makes a worthy partner for the other, and together they contemplate the absurd, mysterious world around them. The first pages track the beginning of their affair and are an elegiac tribute to love, to "that brief moment of continuity between two lovers." But their transgressive love has tragic consequences. After Anna becomes pregnant, and Orr confesses to his wife and later to his congregation, knowledge of the affair will irrevocably change everyone involved. The book concentrates in particular on the suffering of Orr's oldest son, Philip, and of his half-brother, Samuel, the love child, "visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children." A calculated and violent vengeance is meted out by Philip in the first half of the book, and terrifying, creepy aftershocks continue to reverberate in the lives of the grown-up Samuel and his enfeebled father, living together in New York City decades later. Harrison's remarkable writing elevates a story that is all the more powerful for its eschewing of easy answers and resolution. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus-Rezension
Irish filmmaker Harrison's cerebral yet emotional first novel shows how a "brief moment of continuity between two lovers" can have stark and long-lasting consequences.In 2012 Belfast, deeply religious 38-year-old car mechanic-turned-preacher Samuel Orr, a happily married father of three young sons, falls into a passionate if unlikely affair with 26-year-old Anna Stuart, a Beckett scholar at Queen's University. Their sexual attraction burns with fervor, but Harrison also wants his readers to view the affair in philosophical terms with his references to Beckett and transgressive literary philosopher Georges Bataille. An academic intellectual with poetic leanings, Anna is drawn to the way Orr sees "no line between the sacred and the profane." When she becomes pregnant, Orr tells his wife straightforwardly about the affair while acknowledging that he doesn't know what he plans to do. He continues to see Anna yet remains stalwart in his faith in God and himself. Then Orr's wife dieswhether accidentally or on purpose is left unclearwhen struck by a train. Orr's oldest son, 12-year-old Philip, begins to demonstrate a quiet fury against his father; Anna senses the boy embodies his father's sense of guilt. When Anna's baby, named Samuel after both Beckett and Orr, is almost a year old, Orr breaks off their relationship. Philip's rage against his father becomes psychological warfare that culminates in violence. Cut ahead 35 years to a near, non-science-fiction future. Philip has disappeared. Anna has become an accomplished poet and married an artist. Sam Orr works at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and has brought his father, Samuel, now a blind old man, from Ireland to live with him. One day Philip shows up at the museum, and the careful world Sam, a repressed gay man, has erected shatters. The three Orrs must face their capacity for faith, vengeance, and forgiveness as well as their bonds of family love. Despite the borderline pretentious discussions of philosophy and theology, Harrison's elegant prose and deeply felt characters create a novel with a fiercely beating heart. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist-Rezension
Harrison's first novel is a quiet yet suspenseful look at the lasting repercussions of traumatic events. Part 1 begins in Belfast, where Samuel Orr is a married pastor with three children. He meets Anna, and the two share an intellectual attraction that leads to an intense affair resulting in pregnancy. After Orr confesses, his oldest son, Philip, begins a menacing campaign of revenge that results in an act of violence aimed at Anna and Orr's young son, Samuel, who trusts and loves Philip. Part 2, 35 years later, finds the younger Samuel in New York, still suffering the effects of Philip's betrayal though he hasn't seen him since. The past invades the present, however, and Samuel and Orr are once again the targets of Philip's long-simmering anger. The two parts are very different, shifting from meditative third-person narration to foreboding first-person narration, but Harrison's writing is lyrical and engaging throughout, and he does an excellent job of building tension. Despite minimally drawn secondary characters and a too-pat ending, The First Day is an impressive debut.--Sexton, Kathy Copyright 2017 Booklist
Library Journal-Rezension
DEBUT Belfast preacher Samuel Orr seems to embody the Gospels, with his honesty about his own failings and struggles with faith. But he shatters his family and upends his community when he has an affair and then a child with teacher Anna Stuart. The unexpected death of Samuel's wife devastates Philip, his eldest son, whose despair feeds into resentment toward his father. Affection for his half-brother Sam and a fragile friendship with Anna seem to afford Philip solace, but when he deliberately disfigures Sam, he slashes the veneer of equilibrium achieved between Anna and his family. Though Philip disappears, his crime defines Sam's life. Thirty-five years after the incident, Sam lives in New York and runs into Philip. Their encounter sets in motion a suspenseful and ultimately violent series of events that change both men and their father forever. VERDICT Screenwriter -Harrison's absorbing debut will surprise readers with its ingenious plot twists and nuanced characters. Though compared with the work of Albert Camus and D.H. Lawrence, Harrison's cinematic first novel stands on its own.-John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.