Black Baby - Softcover

Clare Boylan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349112029 ISBN 13: 9780349112022

Publisher: Abacus, 1998

Synopsis

As a child Alice had paid the nuns half a crown to adopt a black baby from the mission in Africa - a baby that never appeared. Now a loveless spinster of sixty-seven, still yearning for a daughter, Alice's life is one of dull predictability, unbroken by the ritual visit from her middle-aged relatives.Then one evening Dinah storms into her home. Bawdy, busty and black, enigmatic friend to the wayward and eccentric, Dinah is about to take on Dublin and transform Alice's life - creating a world of unlimited love and miraculous possibilities...

About this title

About the Author:

Clare Boylan was the author of five novels and three volumes of short stories. Her last novel, ROOM FOR A SINGLE LADY, was published by Little, Brown in September 1997.She died in May 2006.

From Publishers Weekly:

Irish writer Boylan ( Holy Pictures ; Last Resorts ) opens her fourth novel with a biblical epigraph: "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares," and the theme reverberates throughout this engaging tale. In an unnamed Irish city, Dinah, a big-hearted black woman with a lust for life, winds up on the doorstep of Alice, a fearful 67-year-old spinster. As Dinah recounts her mythic (and mythical) past, Alice comes to believe that Dinah is the black baby she "bought" for a missionary donation when she was 12 years old. She welcomes Dinah as her daughter, and Dinah breathes new life into Alice's dull existence. Boylan writes with sureness, aplomb and humor; her metaphoric language crackles with exactitude. She never succumbs to sentimentality or quaintness, even when dealing with subjects as potentially dangerous as brotherly love and the loneliness of old age. Despite the somewhat heavy-handed ironic ending, this is a delightful read.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Abacus
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0349112029
• ISBN 13: 9780349112022
• Binding: Paperback