The Hungry Earth

Colorado: Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1997. First American edition. Hardcover. Fine/very good. Turlough Walsh is a high-earning yuppie accountant-nice car, nice kids, nice Dublin house. The boss admires his cutthroat approach to personnel management-squeezing the utmost from "human resources." He's getting places-some call it succeeding-and this involves keeping others down. Not that it bothers Turlough. Guilt and remorse just aren't his way of thinking.Things start to change when he inherits a rural stone cottage, and cracks his head falling drunk through the open half-door. He awakens in the throes of that human catastrophe, the Great Irish Famine. Here he meets people who are suffering, people he grows to love and care about. Suddenly he's asking himself questions. His suburban complacency begins to crumble.In this stunning first novel, Sean Kenny fruitfully combines realism, history, and time-slip sequences with the shocking flavors of a psycho-thiller. Macabre humor leavens the spiritual bankruptcy and quest of a very contemporary character, whose routine work, social life, and extra marital affairs with young women are about to turn around forever. Book is fine with lightest edge wear. The dust jacket, not clipped, is very good with edge wear, rubbed along edges, bumped on the corners. There are 3 small closed tears on the upper edge around the spine. They have been taped from the inside. The jacket srface has some scuffing, especially along the back spine.