Ancient Light

John Banville's Ancient Light is a story of obsessive young love and the power of grief 'Billy Gray was my best friend and I fell in love with his mother.' 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. Praise for Ancient Light : 'Brilliant. Banville excels in his brightly lit descriptions of self-absorbed teenage lust ', Guardian ' Dazzling . . . captures a long-lost adolescent world of passion and desire', Independent 'Banville perfectly captures the spirit of adolescence ... This is a luminous breathtaking work ', Independent on Sunday John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of fourteen previous novels including The Sea , which won the 2005 Man Booker Prize. He was recently awarded the Franz Kafka Prize. He lives in Dublin. 'billy Gray Was My Best Friend And I Fell In Love With His Mother.' Alexander Cleave, An Actor Who Thinks His Best Days Are Behind Him, Remembers His First Unlikely Affair As A Teenage Boy In A Small Town In 1950s Ireland: The Illicit Meetings In A Rundown Cottage Outside Town, Assignations In The Back Of His Lover's Car On Sunny Morning And Rain-soaked Afternoons. And With These Early Memories Comes Something Sharper And Much Darker - The More Recent Recollection Of The Actor's Own Daughter's Suicide Ten Years Before. John Banville. An actor in the twilight of his career reflects on a poignant first love affair at the age of fifteen with his best friend's mother and inexplicably lands a role opposite a famous but fragile actress who helps him come to an astonishing realization. A story of obsessive young love and the power of grief, this novel is written by a Booker Prize winner and author of "The Sea".