SOLACE

Book ID/图书代码： 11701210B36108

English Summary/英文概要： Set in Ireland in the summer of 2008, SOLACE opens at a time when Tom Casey, a farmer in the Irish midlands, has been sharing his home with his only son, Mark, and Mark’s infant daughter, Aoife. Although Tom appears content with this situation, it emerges that the circumstances which have brought Mark and Aoife back to the family farm are far from happy, and that Tom and Mark are currently living through the unreal weeks following a tragedy which has thrown them together in a new and very difficult way. Mark, an academic who has lived in Dublin all his adult life, has always had a tense relationship with Tom, sharing none of his values, shirking all of his ways. But now, in the aftermath of their shared loss, he finds himself with an enormous new responsibility for his father - as well as for the baby daughter whom he has been left to raise alone. He will return to his life in Dublin, but he knows he can never fully escape his father now. This novel is the story of these two men, as well as of the women they have lost, and of the Ireland - or Irelands - in which they live.
From these opening scenes of aftermath, the narrative moves into what seems to be a happier past, two years previously. Mark is finishing his thesis and in the early stages of a new relationship with Joanne, a trainee solicitor who grew up in the same area as him, and with whose father Tom once had a bitter falling-out. The narrative weaves from these young lives to those of Tom and his wife Maura, from Joanne’s obsession with a legal case to Mark’s wrestling with a literary figure of local resonance – the novelist Maria Edgeworth - and from an intoxicated, excited new Dublin to a rural community changing and growing stranger by the day. When Joanne becomes pregnant, life becomes a lot more complicated for her and for Mark, as do their ties to home and to their parents. But what happens to leave Tom and Mark alone with each other and with Mark’s daughter shatters all apparent certainties, and forces father and son to face up to one another and to the realities of the place they call home. A meditation on empathy, responsibility and on the relationship between reality and truth-telling, Solace takes as its subject a family and a country in the process of painful change.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 《慰藉》（SOLACE）一书以2008年爱尔兰的夏天为背景，开启了爱尔兰中部地区农民汤姆•卡赛（Tom Casey）和他独子马克（Mark）以及马克的襁褓女儿阿洛芙（Aoife）的家庭生活。尽管汤姆看上去很满意这样的现状，但发生了一些事情使得马克和阿洛芙回到了农场的家庭生活，远非快乐，而且汤姆和马克目前正处于不真实的日子，悲剧的到来将带他们走上新的困难重重的方式。马克受过良好教育，长大之后一直生活在都柏林，跟父亲没有共同语言，关系一直很紧张。但是现在，在共同的失去中，他发现自己对父亲和需独自抚养的女儿的新的责任。他还会回都柏林过生活，但他明白无法完全逃避他的父亲。小说讲述的是爱尔兰两个失去老婆的男人间的故事。
从开场的描写来看，两年前的过去应该是幸福的。马克即将毕业，正和乔安娜（Joanne）展开一段新的恋情。乔安娜是实习律师，跟他生长在一块区域，汤姆曾和她父亲有过争执。小说从这对年轻人的生活描述到汤姆和他妻子的柴米油盐，从乔安娜醉心的法律案件到马克与当地文学泰斗的较劲，从一个极其兴奋的新都柏林人到乡村社区的变化以及逐日逐日的陌生化。当乔安娜怀孕之后，她和马克的生活变得更加复杂，那要归咎于他们的家和父母的联系。但是发生了一些事情使得只留下了汤姆、马克和马克的小女儿彼此相依为命，粉碎了所有的可能性，迫使父亲呵呵儿子不得不相互面对，共同面对一个家的事实。本书旨在引发情感、责任以及现实与听说的思量，记录了一个家庭和一个小地方的痛苦变化。(兼职翻译-夏佳佳)

Awards/获奖情况：慰藉：英国Picador；美国Scribner

About the Author/作者介绍： 贝林达•麦空恩（Belinda McKeon）是总部设在纽约布鲁克林的爱尔兰时报的美术作家，还是剧作家。她曾因其戏剧、短篇故事和新闻获奖。这是她的第一部长篇小说。

Belinda McKeon is Arts Writer for The Irish Times based in Brooklyn, NY. Also a playwright, she has won awards for her plays, short stories and journalism. This is her first novel.

Format:电子手稿

Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE

Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE

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