Troubles

Name: Troubles
Rating: 3.86 (7190 reviews)

by J. G. Farrell Book 1 in the Empire Trilogy series.

First published 1970

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3.9(7,190)

In 1919 Major Brendan Archer travels to the Irish town of Kilnalough to visit Angela Spencer, the woman he believes became his fiancée during the First World War. He finds her family’s once-grand Majestic Hotel decaying around them, its rooms overtaken by vegetation, elderly residents and feral cats.

Outside the hotel, the Irish War of Independence intensifies and the Anglo-Irish Spencer family responds with denial, prejudice and increasingly desperate displays of authority. Brendan’s uncertain engagement and growing attachment to another woman unfold as the Majestic becomes a Gothic image of a ruling class unable to understand the political world collapsing beyond its gates.