An apple a day keeps the thrillseekers saying "Fair Play!" to the newest author on Whom You Know, Flynn Berry. This is our first time reading her work and we are so impressed we may go back and read her other work! Yes, Northern Spy is a kind of apple.
Northern Spy should be having a bidding war as to who owns the movie rights by now and Liam Neeson, Antrim native, should absolutely be in it (and also Peachy obviously).
Writing with a depth of emotion and empathy few achieve, Berry writes and conveys more with her literary tools of the trade to craft a tight, succinct story with maximum impact. Perhaps she kissed the Blarney Stone, found way down in County Cork, opposite of Northern Ireland where this novel takes place. While lesser, more inconsequential authors have offered us watered-down cheap rose stories we have not published on or told you about, Flynn Berry quality is on par with 15-year Macallan (Scottish, not Irish, but you get the idea).
As avid readers know, Peachy spent a semester abroad in Ireland giving her life residential experience of knowing if an American author has got Ireland right and the authenticity is on the mark in Northern Spy. We will not claim to be experts on the North or on the IRA because we are not-but the verbiage is cracking and you will be googling more slang than you think with pleasure! Your vocabulary will massively improve as a result.
This will appeal in particular to mothers and sisters because of the characters involved.
For everyone that is ignorant of the troubles of Northern Ireland, the education this book provides - though it is a novel - will paint a picture that will make America look hugely united in contrast. Northern Spy is as much of a peacemaker as it is a thriller and it is an absolute perfect book to crack open right now as Manhattan awaits its next thunderstorm.
Northern Spy is Highly Recommended by Whom You Know.
Flynn Berry, the Edgar Award-winning author of Under the Harrow (Penguin Books, 2016) and the critically acclaimed follow-up, A Double Life (Viking, 2018), has established herself as one of the best new voices in suspense. Now, she returns with her most rich and riveting novel to date: NORTHERN SPY (Viking; On Sale April 6, 2021; $26), an extensively researched, immaculately crafted and propulsive thriller about the contemporary IRA, and two sisters who find themselves caught in the middle of the re-escalating sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.
Tessa, born and raised in Belfast, is a news producer for the BBC. She is also the single mother of a six-month-old son, who she is raising in the shadow of escalating threats to peace by a reemerging IRA. While she’s at work one day, news breaks of an IRA raid at a gas station a few hours to the north. Tessa freezes as security camera footage reveals a familiar face: her sister, Marian, who is at the scene, putting on a black ski mask. From that moment, Tessa’s life is upended, as she struggles to confront the seemingly impossible truth that her sister has become involved with the IRA.
When Marian’s circumstances become clear, Tessa is thrust into an increasingly dangerous situation. Faced with a series of life-altering decisions, she will have to weigh her principles, her convictions, and her very identity against the imperative of keeping her family—and her country—safe.
With stunning precision and in gut-wrenching detail, Berry has delivered a novel that is at once a riveting thriller, a moving exploration of sister- and motherhood, and a fascinating exploration of life in the midst of an entrenched conflict, and its often-unseen repercussions.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Flynn Berry is the New York Times bestselling author of three novels: Northern Spy, a Reese’s Book Club Pick; A Double Life, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; and Under the Harrow, which won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel and was named a best book of the year by The Washington Post and The Atlantic. The recipient of a Yaddo fellowship, she is a graduate of Brown University and the Michener Center for Writers.
NORTHERN SPY
Flynn Berry
ISBN: 9780735224995
Also available as an e- and audiobook
Penguin Random House, the world’s largest trade book publisher, is dedicated to its mission of nourishing a universal passion for reading by connecting authors and their writing with readers everywhere. The company, which employs more than 10,000 people globally, was formed on July 1, 2013, by Bertelsmann and Pearson, who own 75 percent and 25 percent, respectively. With nearly 275 independent imprints and brands on five continents, Penguin Random House comprises adult and children’s fiction and nonfiction print and digital English- and Spanish-language trade book publishing businesses in more than 20 countries worldwide. With over 15,000 new titles, and close to 800 million print, audio and eBooks sold annually, Penguin Random House’s publishing lists include more than 80 Nobel Prize laureates and hundreds of the world’s most widely read authors.
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