Conville & Walsh
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Long Time, No See
- Author: Dermot Healy
- Category: Fiction Literary
- Publisher: Faber & Faber (UK)
- Pub date: 1 April 2011
- Length: 448 pages
About Long Time, No See
Long Time, No See is a celebration of the whole gift of existence… a quiet hymn to the troubled ecstasy of life on the Atlantic seaboard
- Keith Hopper, TLS
LONG TIME, NO SEE introduces us to the unforgettable world of Mister Psyche in the isolated coastal townland of Ballintra in the north-west of Ireland. Recent school-leaver, occasional worker, full-time companions and Malibu provider to Uncle Joe-Joe and his friend Blackbird, Psyche is a boy on the cusp of adulthood, undone by a recent traumatic event.
Hanging out with men some fifty-plus years his senior proves hazardous for Mister Psyche when the appearance of a bullet-hole in Uncle Joe-Joe’s window draws him into a series of (mis)adventures which unsettle and bemuse. Perhaps The Blackbird is losing it? Or perhaps The General has decided to act on a decades-old grudge? Whichever way, as the paranoia grabs a creeping hold on Uncle Joe-Joe, his fragile world threatens to collapse. And it is Mister Psyche who must digest this and acknowledge the new world taking shape in the old.
A novel about community, family, love and bonds across generations, LONG TIME, NO SEE is one of the most significant novels to come out of Ireland in this new century. An epic in miniature, peopled by a cast of innocents and broken misfits, its still, lyrical power casts a miraculous literary spell.
About the Author
Dermot Healy was born in Westmeath in 1947, and is an Irish novelist, playwright and poet. He has written nine plays, and five anthologies of poetry. He is also the author of BANISHED MISFORTUNE, A GOATSONG, FIGHTING WITH SHADOWS, THE BEND FOR HOME (a memoir), SUDDEN TIMES and most recently LONG TIME, NO SEE.
His awards include the Hennessy Award (1974 and 1976) for Short Stories; the Tom Gallon Award (1983); the Encore Award (1995). He was the winner of the 2002 America Ireland Literary Award, which was funded by the America Ireland Fund and given in recognition of his contribution to Irish letters.
Dermot is currently a member of Aosdána and of its governing body, the Toscaireacht, and lives on the West Coast of County Sligo, Ireland.