With the brilliant TWISTED AGENDAS due to be launched on 1st September, it was fantastic to see a feature on the book and its author, Damain McNicholl, in the Sunday World.
Focussing on Damian's inspiring story, first novel A SON CALLED GABRIEL, becoming a film option and the launch of the second novel, the feature is a must-read (as is TWISTED AGENDAS!)
For details and to order a copy, just click here.
Tom
Everyone who orders a book from our site in December is automatically entered into a prize draw to win a hoard of Legend Press books!
Today's book of the day is A Son Called Gabriel by Damian McNicholl.
“McNicholl is a fine storyteller and, in Gabriel, he has created a convincing, complicated and likable main character.” Curledup.com“Incredible writing…with a debut as delightful as this is, I can only imagine what Mr. McNicholl is currently working on. I know I will be anxiously awaiting it.” Roundtable Reviews
“Damian McNicholl does a marvelous job telling this heartbreaking story of a boy fighting against himself - so good that you will not be able to put it down." Wordswordswords.com
“A beautiful story, wonderfully written, and the top of my list for recommended reading for everyone, gay or straight. " The Open Book
“McNicholl's affable voice captures the wary innocence and budding sexuality of youth with polished and amiable originality.” Book Marks
Order your copy of A Son Called Gabriel now - £7.99 
Lucy
We were pleased to hear this week that a film deal for A Son Called Gabriel has been secured with award winning Irish director Tom Collins.
Tom Collins is an Irish film and TV director from Defacto Film and Video Production. His last film Kings was Ireland’s entry for the 2008 Oscar’s for Best Foreign Language Film, with a record 14 nominations from the Irish Film Academy. The script for A Son Called Gabriel will be written jointly by author Damian McNicholl and Tom Collins.
This is fantastic news for the book, which will hopefully secure further publicity for this brilliant book.
Lucy
A Son of Gabriel has got an excellent review from Caroline Smailes blog site In search of Adam and much much more:
"I read this story and found myself wanting to befriend Gabriel. His words held such sincerity, the voice carried beauty that engaged and pleased on so many levels. This is a stunning debut, with linguistic beauty that captures and evokes. I highly recommend this book to you all."
The site also features an interesting interview from Damian.
Lucy
We have just heard this afternoon that a Son Called Gabriel has been chosen as Bookcentre's Irish Book of the Month for November and will be promoted front of shop in their stores in Ireland. This is great news for this fantastic book and well-deceived! The book has been getting lots of press attention in Ireland with reviewers emailing me to tell me they are mid-read and gripped!
“Comic, courageous and often painful, this is a beautifully paced and balanced novel that will have an assured place in contemporary Irish writing.” Seamus Deane, Shortlisted for Booker Prize
‘Incredible writing…with a debut as delightful as this is, I can only imagine what Mr. McNicholl is currently working on. I know I will be anxiously awaiting it." Roundtablereviews.com
The book is of course available to pre-order...
Pre-order your copy now - £7.99
Lucy
A Son Called Gabriel is not my first work and came into being as the result of advice given me by a friend who was involved in the world of magazine publishing in New York City. I'd written a novel about a love affair between a young Irish Catholic girl attending college in Belfast and a wealthy Protestant man and given it to my friend to read when I thought it was as polished as I could ever make it. After reading the piece, he informed me I had talent but the story was unending and needed a huge amount of editing. I was shocked (anyone wanting to get published needs to have a thick skin) but accepted his criticism, though didn't have the heart to tackle yet another rewrite as I'd spent two years researching and working on it. I set it aside. (It's now bits and bytes on a floppy disk and I refer to it as my "cutting your teeth" novel, something every published writer has stuck in a drawer somewhere.)
The next day I started work on A Son Called Gabriel. The protagonist's voice and personality must have already been fully formed in my subconscious because the plot flowed effortlessly from the recesses of my mind to my rapidly tapping fingers. I found myself transitioning effortlessly from the voice of the six-year-old Gabriel as the novel opens to the fourteen-year-old in its middle to the eighteen-year-old at its end. It was literally as if Gabriel were typing the words and dialog, and I must confess I did not had that kind of satisfying feeling with the first or my current novel. Indeed, the first draft of 'Gabriel' took only about four months or so to write. Of course a first draft of anything is very rough and needs a great deal of editing to produce a work that's publishable. That process took an additional four months.
Because A Son Called Gabriel reads like a memoir and is written in the first person, I've often been asked by media and readers in the United States (where it was first published) whether the protagonist is really me. It's a fair question because often writers in a first novel do write about their lives. The answer is that I've experienced some of the events in the novel and then developed them for the story's purposes, but the Harkin family is not my family and the novel's setting and family's dark secret is completely fictional. In writing A Son Called Gabriel, my purpose was to try and write a different kind of Irish novel, one that juxtaposed the protagonist's inner conflicts (including those revolving around his complex sexuality) as he grew up within the bosom of a conservative family with the external conflict ravaging 1970s Northern Ireland, and to do it with humor as well as pathos.
Damian
A Son Called Gabriel is published on 25th October and is now available to pre-order
