Ancient Light

<p><b>John Banville''s <i>Ancient Light </i>is a story of obsessive young love and the power of grief </b><br><br><i><b>''Billy Gray was my best friend and I fell in love with his mother.''<br><br></b></i>In a small town in 1950s Ireland a fifteen-year-old boy has illicit meetings with a thirty-five-year-old woman - in the back of her car on sunny mornings, and in a rundown cottage in the country on rain-soaked afternoons. Unsure why she has chosen him, he becomes obsessed and tormented by this first love. Half a century later, actor Alexander Cleave - grieving for the recent loss of his daughter - recalls these trysts, trying to make sense of the boy he was and of the needs and frailties of the human heart.<br><br>Praise for <i>Ancient Light</i>:<br><br><b>''Startlingly brilliant</b>. Terrific - full of sadness and yearning'' Sunday Telegraph<br><br>''<b>Dazzling</b> . . . captures a long-lost adolescent world of passion and desire'', <i>Independent<br></i><br><b>''Illuminating, funny, devastating</b>. A meditation of breathtaking beauty and profundity on love and loss and death'' Financial Times<br><br><b>John Banville</b> was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of fourteen previous novels including <i>The Sea</i>, which won the 2005 Man Booker Prize. He was recently awarded the Franz Kafka Prize. He lives in Dublin.</p>