The Light of Amsterdam: A Novel

by David Park

Overview

It is December; Christmas is approaching and the magic of one of Europe's most beautiful cities beckons. A father looks for himself in the past, struggling to deal with a recent divorce, his teenage son in tow. A single, selfless mother accompanies her only daughter and friends for a weekend-long bachelorette party. And a husband treats his wife to a birthday weekend away, somehow heightening her anxieties and insecurities about age, desire, and motherhood. As these people brush against one another in the squares, museums, and parks of Amsterdam, their lives are transfigured in the winter light, and they encounter the complexities of love in a city that challenges what has gone before. Tender and humane, elevating the ordinary to something timeless and important, The Light of Amsterdam is a novel of compassion and rare dignity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608197583
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	11/13/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	562,618
File size:	898 KB

About the Author

David Park has written seven books, most recently the hugely acclaimed The Truth Commissioner. He was the winner of the Authors' Club First Novel Award, and the Bass Ireland Arts Award for Literature, and three-time winner of the University of Ulster's McCrea Literary Award. He has twice been shortlisted for the Irish Novel of the Year Award. He lives in County Down, Northern Ireland, with his wife and two children.
David Park has written nine previous books including The Big Snow, Swallowing the Sun, The Truth Commissioner, The Light of Amsterdam, which was shortlisted for the 2014 International IMPAC Prize, and, most recently, The Poets' Wives, which was selected as Belfast's Choice for One City One Book 2014. He has won the Authors' Club First Novel Award, the Bass Ireland Arts Award for Literature, the Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize, the American Ireland Fund Literary Award and the University of Ulster's McCrea Literary Award, three times. He has received a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and been shortlisted for the Irish Novel of the Year Award three times. In 2014 he was longlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. He lives in County Down, Northern Ireland.

Editorial Reviews

The streets, canals, and parks of Amsterdam play host to personal reckonings in Park’s remarkable new novel (after The Truth Commissioner). Alan, a recently divorced father, drags his teenage son, Jack, to the Dutch capital for a vacation in a bid to jump-start his post-marriage life; Marion accompanies her husband, Richard (whom she suspects has been unfaithful), to the city for a birthday getaway; and single mom Karen tags along for her daughter Shannon’s bachelorette party. Park eases into each character’s story, bringing their struggles, hopes, and loves into delicate relief as they wander through their thoughts and down the cobbled lanes of the wintry city. At once an amalgam of sensitive character studies, Park’s newest is also a gorgeous portrait of the Venice of the North—as Marion, Richard, Jack, et al. navigate their various desires and disappointments, each alights on some bit of beauty. Agent: Rachel Calder, the Sayle Agency. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

This is a novel about people, about feelings, thoughts, and struggles, and Park does an excellent job of developing the characters and making the reader care about them...a humane and touching read.” —The Library Journal

“Remarkable...At once an amalgam of sensitive character studies, Park's newest is also a gorgeous portrait of the Venice of the North.” —Publishers Weekly

“Poetic, hopeful.” —O Magazine

“A humane and deeply empathetic writer, Park turns the most ordinary of interactions into a moving story of people's greatest hopes and fears.” —Booklist

From the Publisher

Park's (The Truth Commissioner) latest novel is crafted around three people from Belfast who are visiting Amsterdam at the same time but for very different reasons. The reader first meets Alan, a divorced father and university art professor trying to reconnect with his disaffected teenage son. Next is Karen, a working-class single mother reluctantly accompanying her daughter on a hen-party weekend they can hardly afford. The third and oldest character is Marion, a long-married wife on a short holiday with her husband away from their garden-center business. This is a novel about people, about feelings, thoughts, and struggles, and Park does an excellent job of developing the characters and making the reader care about them. As the novel develops, readers might find themselves identifying with one character, only to find they are most touched by another later on. VERDICT This might not appeal to readers of fast-paced action or mystery novels, but it is a humane and touching read, well worth a try for those who have not read Park's previous work. Fans of Irish fiction should also take note.—Shaunna Hunter, Hampden-Sydney Coll. Lib., VA

Library Journal