John McGahern 
Dark 

The celebrated second novel by 'one of the greatest writers of our era' (Hilary Mantel) and 'the Irish novelist everyone should read' (Colm Toibin) is 'a perfectly written tour de force' (Sunday Times) and 'the best novel to come out of Ireland in many years.' (Irish Times)Set in rural Ireland, John Mc Gahern's second novel is about adolescence and a guilty, yet uncontrollable sexuality that is contorted and twisted by both puritanical state religion and a strange, powerful and ambiguous relationship between son and widower father. Against a background evoked with quiet mastery, Mc Gahern explores with precision and tenderness a human situation, superficially very ordinary, but inwardly an agony of longing and despair. 'Wise and compelling … Elegiac and graceful.' David Mitchell'I have admired, even loved, John Mc Gahern's work since his first novel.' Melvyn Bragg