Temptation Book

Dermot Bolger's Temptation is the kind of powerfully involving novel that comes along rarely and has as its central focus a family encountering an emotionally turbulent time on an annual holiday in a hotel on the beautiful Southeast coast of Ireland. Bolger's heroine, Alison Gill, is the mother of three children taking a much-anticipated annual family holiday at Fitzgeralds' Hotel, one of the most celebrated in Ireland. All is idyllic, but Alison is thrown into confused memories of the past when her husband is forced by a work crisis to return to Dublin and she encounters the attractive, disturbing Chris. He's a lover from 20 years ago, and soon Alison is forced to confront the choices she has made in her life. Is what she considered to be happiness really what she wanted? And if she gives in again to the sexual passion of her youth, will she find her real self--or destroy all that she has carefully built up? The canny reader will soon spot the presence of one of the finest writers in the English language as an inspiration for Bolger's highly assured novel. The Irish setting; a middle aged woman dangerously attracted to a man who may be very bad news for her; the astonishingly sympathetic understanding of a female protagonist by a male writer: all of these are the hallmarks of the great William Trevor. But if the latter is an influence, Bolger is still very much his own man. This is an immensely understanding and perceptive novel, with all the characters richly and quirkily characterised. His pièce de résistance, though, is his heroine: Alison is that rarity in modern fiction: a woman about whom the reader is allowed to frequently change their opinion. We are alternately moved or irritated by her, but always we are firmly locked in her consciousness. The writing, too, has an elegance that always ensures a rich experience for the reader, and reminds us that the author has edited The New Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction: She could never have understood back then how there might be other kinds of loneliness when living inside a family...now at times their lovemaking felt like a habit without need of speech, an instinctive curling into safe, comfortable positions, his arms routinely around her as they slipped towards shared sleep. --Barry ForshawRead More