A day in the life of a mad housewife in Manhattan: “One of the truest and most awesome books I have ever read” (The Scotsman). She was born Mary Dunne. A New York actress in a stalled career, she’s previously been known as Maria and Martha. Married three times, she’s also been called Mrs. Phelan, Mrs. Bell, and currently, Mrs. Terence Lavery—wife of the esteemed playwright. No wonder Mary Dunne forgot her name this morning at the hairdresser. She has no idea who she is anymore. Or maybe she’s just crazy. She’s curious to find out. Over the course of a single day, Mary tries to recall more than her name. But as memories of her past come trickling back—infuriating, illuminating, and grievous—she realizes there’s so much she’d prefer to forget. As she tries to escape what she calls “the dooms,” Mary must confront what she’s done with her life—deliberately, haplessly, or by default. If only she were going crazy; it would be so much easier to explain it all away. Hailed by the Globe and Mail as a “feminist novel written before the wave of feminist novels began,” I Am Mary Dunne is “as complex and satisfying as anything Moore has yet done” (The Observer).

Four Contemporary Novelists offer accounts of the fiction of Angus Wilson, Brian Moore, John Fowles, and V. S. Naipaul. The author has charted the development of each writer; identified dominant themes, controlling techniques, and informing sensibility; explained what each has tried to accomplish and compare theory to practice; provided an appropriate context for appreciation and evaluation of all parts of each canon; and made qualitative discriminations.

Moore grew up in Northern Ireland and as a young man spent a number of years travelling throughout Europe while working for the British Ministry of War Transport. In 1948 he left for Montreal, where he began his literary career. While living in Canada he supported his writing by working as a proof-reader, reporter, and pseudonymous thriller-writer. He wrote his first serious novel, Judith Hearne, during a stay of several months in a log cabin in Quebec's Laurentian Mountains. After eleven years in Canada, he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and moved to New York. He eventually moved to Hollywood to write a film for Alfred Hitchcock and now lives in Malibu, California. Jo O'Donoghue identifies Moore as a writer particularly interested both in questions of religion and in a world he believes to have largely abandoned traditional spiritual values. Moore's Irish Catholic upbringing, she demonstrates, has located him in an enclosed, self-sufficient community with a strong sense of the spiritual. O'Donoghue regards Moore as remarkable among modern male novelists for the depth of his interest in women and the sensitivity and acuteness of his insights into women's psychology. Although Moore, in a literary career spanning more than thirty years, has published sixteen novels and one work of reportage and has won numerous literary prizes, he has only recently attracted the sort of consistent critical acclaim which is his due. The Colour of Blood finally secured recognition for him as one of the truly important novelists of the late twentieth century. O'Donoghue's study is the first major critical analysis of the work of this gifted and accomplished writer.

Each volume of the Irish Writers series is devoted to one Irish writer of the 19th or 20th century, giving a full account of their literary careers and major works, and considering the relationship of their Irish backgrounds to their writings as a whole.

Brian Moore (1921 1999) is one of the few novelists whose literary portrayal of Catholicism effectively spans the period prior to and following the Second Vatican Council. Many critics have discussed how Moore's life is reflected in his works, while others have dismissed his fictions as simple narratives in the mould of classical realism. In this timely book, Gearon contends that Moore's fictions are far more complex, as he was one of the great observers of Catholicism in all its modern and historical controversy. .