{"product_id":"this-magnificent-desolation-1","title":"Thomas O'Malley: This Magnificent Desolation [2013] hardback","description":"\u003cb\u003eA heart-breaking, staggering, soaring novel about war, music, loneliness and the redemptive power of the imagination\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuncan's entire world is the orphanage where he lives, a solitary outpost in the snowy expanse of northern Minnesota. Aged ten in 1980, he has no memories of his life before now, but he has stories that he recites like prayers: the story of how his mother brought him here during the worst blizzard of the century; the story of how God spoke to him at his birth and gave him a special purpose.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuncan is sure that his mother is dead until the day she turns up to claim him. Maggie Bright, a soprano who was once the talent of her generation, now sings in a San Francisco bar through a haze of whisky cut with sharp regret. She often finishes up in the arms of Joshua McGreevey, a Vietnam vet who earns his living as part of a tunneling crew seventy feet beneath the Bay. He smells of sea silt and loam, as if he has been dredged from the deep bottom of the world - and his wounds run deep too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThrown into this mysterious adult world, Duncan finds comfort in an ancient radio, from which tumble the voices of Apollo mission astronauts who never came home, and dreams of finding his real father.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA heart-breaking, staggering, soaring novel, \u003ci\u003eThis Magnificent Desolation\u003c\/i\u003e allows a child's perspective to illuminate a dark world, and explores the creeping devastation of war, the many facets of loneliness and the redemptive power of the imagination.","brand":"O'malley, Thomas","offers":[{"title":"Very Good","offer_id":48084467450195,"sku":"XV81408833803","price":5.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0616\/4001\/6057\/files\/o-malley-thomas-thomas-o-malley-this-magnificent-desolation-2013-hardback-xv81408833803-1154102655.jpg?v=1743700051","url":"https:\/\/chaptersbookstore.pro\/products\/this-magnificent-desolation-1","provider":"Chapters Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}