The Sugar Sugar Cafe by Michael Sheehan
Brand: The Feldstein Agency
Product Description
In a series of interlinking episodes and intertwining stories The Sugar Sugar Cafe book looks at the lives lived out in quiet or not so quiet desperation of a cast of ordinary individuals in a small town on the outskirts of Cork city in Ireland in the dark days after the 2008 financial crash. The action centres on The Sugar Sugar Caf a small greasy spoon caf in Rathluirc but encompasses other locations as far flung as Manila and New York city as the story shifts between past and present between comedy and tragedy between fantasy and grim reality. A bleak yet compelling narrative told through the alternating perspectives of each of the key characters hammers home the extent to which for so many people daily life is mostly taken up with a gruelling struggle to simply get by and isolation and frustration are an inevitable part of the everyday routine. This sense of hopelessness is alleviated however by many moments of dark humour and above all by the rich and often surprising inner lives of these individuals into which we as readers are given a privileged glimpse. As the novel progresses each character reaches their own individual point of crisis. Some will look disaster squarely in the face and manage to sidestep its worst consequences others will plunge with a kind of fatalistic enthusiasm into fresh setback and new worlds of pain. The common denominator in all of their stories is a realisation that many of the key structures of modern society family church romantic relationships work school the justice system all the things we are taught to aspire to are woefully inadequate in helping us navigate the crushing realities of the daily grind. Dark and yet funny tragic and yet comic the nasty brutish and short lives depicted in this compelling novel are rescued from despair by the deep humanity and compassion of the writer who has conceived them. Micheal Sheehan Michel OSochin was born in Gorey Co. Wexford in 1962 and grew up Co. Cork. He has lived and worked in Barcelona Laredo Washington DC and London and has now returned to his hometown of Charleville. He currently works as a lecturer in accounting in LIT Limerick and is married with three children. Since 2010 Micheal has had numerous short stories short or longlisted for national awards including the William Trevor award the Over the Edge New Writer of the Year competition and the PenguinRTE short story award. In 2017 he won the Over the Edge short story competition as well as their New Writer of the Year 20178 award. The Sugar Sugar Caf is Micheals first novel show more
Condition : New
Author : Michael Sheehan
Weight : 1491
Publisher : The Feldstein Agency
Language : English
EAN : 9780956386434
ISBN10 : 0956386431
Format : Paperback Softback
Date of Publication : 20081128
Place of Publication : United Kingdom
Pagination : 290 Pages
Dimensions : 210 X 150 X 22