The Big Snow - Hardcover

Park, David

3.31

157 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582342490 ISBN 13: 9781582342498

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2002

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Shaken free from the normal patterns of their lives by a catastrophic blizzard, the intimate desires of a Northern Irish community are thrown into sharp relief as they experience love, death, and finally, murder.

In a house with windows flung defiantly wide, a wife dies before her husband can make his confession. Her coffin is pulled to the church on a sledge by Peter, a young man engulfed by his first feelings of love for an older, unattainable woman. Elsewhere, an old woman searches desperately for a wedding dress in her dream of love. When the electricity fails, a lonely headmaster is forced to close his school and in shadowy candlelight he is tempted into indiscretion. Meanwhile, in the very heart of the city, the purity of snow is tainted by the murder of a young woman, and as one man begins to unravel the dark secrets of the city, he knows he is in race against time-to find the murderer before the snow melts.

David Park peers into the souls of his characters with an insight and compassion that makes this flawed slice of humanity somehow glorious. He is a writer of rare dignity and talent.

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From the Publisher:

"David Park...is a writer of consequence, lyrical, precise, comic, and serious."-Boston Globe
"A taut, riveting urban murder-mystery. Park is a superb writer."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[A] closely observed tale of how transfigured landscapes and familiar yearnings converge...quiet and absorbing."-Washington Post Book World
"Despair, desire, deception: Park is deft at revealing their traumas through his Everyman characters, contrasting the cold, white purity of snow with the hot-blooded, red taint of humanity."-Miami Herald
"Lyric eloquence...A moving and unusual novel filled with unexpected encounters and unpredictible outcomes."-Orlando Sentinel
"Park uses the imagery of his setting in every conceivable fashion and to powerful effect. Masterful fiction."-Booklist

About the Author:

David Park is the author of three novels and a volume of short stories. He was the winner of the Authors' Club First Novel Award, the Bass Ireland Arts Award for Literature and a twice winner of the University of Ulster's McCrea Literary Award. He lives in County Down, Northern Ireland with his wife and two children.

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