The Truth Commissioner - Softcover

Praise for SWALLOWING THE SUN: 'Line for line, it is hard to think of a more skilful contemporary Irish novelist. He shares with John McGahern a refusal of cheap flamboyance, with Dermot Bolger a sense of suppressed fury. Flawed, brilliant, knotty, uncompromising, this is not an easy novel, but it is an important and beautiful one' Joseph O'Connor, Guardian 'David Park is of a similar generation, but for me has always stood apart from his contemporaries with a cool and beautifully poised style that renders the most ordinary moments into perfectly measured prose ... It's gripping and deeply memorable ... This is a superb novel' Dermot Bolger 'I loved this book. Technically brilliant and emotionally powerful, Swallowing the Sun thrills even as it breaks your heart' Glenn Patterson Praise for THE HEALING: 'The beauty of Park's work lies in the simplicity of the telling, the exquisiteness of his language and a blazing tension ... He is, one feels, interested in the truth' Irish Independent

Henry Stanfield is pleased with his new title: 'Truth Commissioner' has a pleasing ring to it. But his neutrality, as the product of an Irish Catholic mother and an English Protestant father, is about to be tested. Francis Gilroy, Minister for Children and Culture, has murky secrets that could leave him vulnerable, but his people have dealt with them; after all, it was a war they were fighting. James Fenton, retired RUC policeman, is haunted by the small, vulnerable white face of a boy who he could have saved, and failed to. Danny and Ramona flick through brochures, choosing a cot for their unborn child - but now the past is about to pull Danny back to Belfast and threaten everything beautiful and fragile that they have built together. Four very different men hold the secret between them of what happened to fifteen-year-old Conor Walshe on 10th May 1990. David Park tells each of their stories in prose that is insightful, direct and utterly involving.