'Margaret Bryce, deceased mother of twins, has been having a hard time since dying in 2014. These days she spends time with her daughters – Eva in Madrid, and Rachel and her family in Melbourne – and her estranged husband, Henry, in Aberdeen. Mostly she enjoys the experience of revisiting the past, but she's tiring of the seemingly random events to which she repeatedly bears witness. There must be something more to life, she thinks. And death.
'Spanning more than seventy-five years, from 1945 to 2021, A Country of Eternal Light follows Margaret as she flits from wartime Germany to Thatcher's Britain to modern-day Scotland, Australia and Spain, ruminating on everything from the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster and Australia's Black Summer bushfires to Mary Queen of Scots' beheading, the death of Princess Diana and in-vitro fertilisation. But why is facing up to what's happened in one's past as hard as, if not harder than, blocking it out completely? A poignant, utterly original and bitingly funny novel about complicated grief and how we remain wanted by our loved ones, dead or alive.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'A stunning story about the ephemeral nature of life in a human body.'
'Paul Dalgarno’s novel A Country of Eternal Light opens with his narrator, Margaret Bryce, in a bathtub. This is no ordinary bathtub, but one that exists between the world of the living and the dead.' (Introduction)
'Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein gives Paul Dalgarno’s second novel its title, weaving through the narrative as an allegory for sparking life, a filament of memory and imagination. A Country of Eternal Light follows Dalgarno’s 2020 debut novel, Poly, an adventure in kitchen-table polyamory, and his 2015 memoir, And You May Find Yourself. This year also sees the release of his second non-fiction book, Prudish Nation.' (Introduction)
'Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein gives Paul Dalgarno’s second novel its title, weaving through the narrative as an allegory for sparking life, a filament of memory and imagination. A Country of Eternal Light follows Dalgarno’s 2020 debut novel, Poly, an adventure in kitchen-table polyamory, and his 2015 memoir, And You May Find Yourself. This year also sees the release of his second non-fiction book, Prudish Nation.' (Introduction)
'Paul Dalgarno’s novel A Country of Eternal Light opens with his narrator, Margaret Bryce, in a bathtub. This is no ordinary bathtub, but one that exists between the world of the living and the dead.' (Introduction)
'A stunning story about the ephemeral nature of life in a human body.'
