Gallagher House

About the Book

Gallagher House Summary and Blurb from Peter Quinn Gallagher House beings in the present before moving back in time to World War II, when young Frederick Gallager, against a background of war and death but also of magical youthful discoveries, attempts to find his bearings and his identity. The setting is an upstate New York town with a historic harbor on Lake Ontario. There from the age of eight to the begining of his twelfth year, he lives with his parents in his grandmother's hotel, the Gallagher House, which has been in the Gallagher family for a hundred years and is a gathering place of the local Irish in a predominantly Irish-American town. Gallagher House possesses a luminous realism that is reminiscent at times of James Joyce, but has a voice very much its own as it creates a haunting American world in the richness of family ties and undoing, and in a small boy's yearning. The hotel has an evocative life of its own, having all the fascination and force of ilusion. Praise for Gallagher House "With perfect ear for dialogue and perfect eye for detail, Robert Emmet Long has written a series of revealing, evocative, beautifully crafted tales in novel form. Rendered with magical immediacy and telling honesty from a small boy's perspective, the work brings to life a time and culture that have passed into history. Long is a masterful blend of truth teller and prose stylist. I was touched, enlightened and delighted by the precision and unsparing elegance of his writing. His portrait of the Gallagers and their circle deserves a place in the canon of Irish-American literature." Peter Quinn National Book Award Winning Novelist

About the Author

Robert Emmet Long is a nationally recognized interpreter of British and American literature, who also writes on the performing arts—both theater and films. He was born in Oswego, New York; and received his B. A. and Ph. D. degrees from Columbia University. A former college teacher, he now devotes himself wholly to writing. His articles and reviews in national magazines and newspapers—such as The Christian Science Monitor, the Saturday Review, and The Nation—number in the hundreds. His books include critical studies of Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, with subjects in the performing arts ranging from Ingmar Bergman and Merchant Ivory to Jerome Robbins and Broadway’s great choreographer-directors.