It is 1958, and as Laika, the Sputnik dog is launched
into space, Golly Murray, the Cullymore barber's wife,
finds herself oddly obsessing about the canine
cosmonaut. Meanwhile, Fonsey 'Teddy' O'Neill, is
returning, like the prodigal son, from overseas, with
brylcream in his hair, and a Cuban-heeled swagger to his
step, having experienced his coming-of-age in Butlin's,
Skegness. Father Augustus Hand is working on a bold new
theatrical production for Easter, which he, for one,
knows will put Cullymore on the map. And, as the
Manchester United football team prepare to take off from
Munich airport, James A Reilly sits in his hovel by the
lake outside town, with his pet fox and his father's
gun, feeling the weight of an insidious and inscrutable
presence pressing down upon him. From the closed
terraces and back lanes of rural Ireland to the
information highway and global separations of our own
time, The Stray Sod Country is at once an homage to what
we think we may have lost and a chilling reminder that
the past has never really passed.With echoes of Peyton
Place, and Fellinni's Amarcord, and with a sinister,
diabolical narrator at its heart, this is at once a
story of a small town - with its secrets, fears,
friendships and betrayals - and a sweeping, grand
guignol of theatrical extravagance from one of the
finest writers of his generation. |
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