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THE GORGEOUS INERTIA OF THE EARTH

Adrian Duncan

In this moving new novel, award-winning Irish writer Adrian Duncan explores love and grief while finding their resonance in works of art
During winter season in a secluded Alpine city, John Molloy, an Irish restorative sculptor, meets Bernadette, an enigmatic Italian sociologist. As John falls in love, a distressing moment from his youth rises into view, the disastrous fallout of which has reverberated unchecked through his life.

Years later, a letter from home arrives, asking him to pray for the speedy death of an ailing friend. Over a day-long odyssey through the ancient streets and churches of Bologna, John is forced to confront his present, his past and the bedrock of his psyche. A delicately crafted novel of two halves, a decade apart, The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth is a masterful excavation of human desires, inhibitions, and the patterns of habit to which we unwittingly fall prey.

Adrian Duncan is an Irish artist and writer. His debut novel Love Notes from a German Building Site won the 2019 John McGahern Book Prize. His second novel A Sabbatical in Leipzig (2020) was shortlisted for the Kerry Novel of the Year. His collection of short stories Midfield Dynamo was published in 2021 and longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. His third novel, The Geometer Lobachevsky, was published in April 2022.
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Published 2025-01-30 by Tuskar Rock

Comments

The exact and the visionary ... an original voice

With admirable seriousness, Adrian Duncan explores themes of art, religion and decay

The Gorgeous inertia of the Earth is a moving tribute to making in all its forms not least that of writing

The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth is an important novel, one that will leave an important imprint, and one that, like great poetry, demands re-reading

Duncan, ever the geometer, has writen an intriguing story about the spatial reasoning of intimacy: how lovers carve out space together, how reticent people bend or break, and how you can begin to see someone in a totally new light.

The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth is not just a novel about a sculptor, it is also a novel which self-consciously attempts to reenact, or perform, the process of sculpting. To this end, the narrative voice constantly weighs the scene, checks it from various angles, considers where its boundaries should be, how it would look lit by sunlight or candlelight, and only then . chip . a declaration is made and the heart of things becomes almost imperceptibly clearer. It makes for a deliberative and delicate reading experience, revelatory in the truest sense of that word

A sculptor embarks on a philosophical quest in this revelatory tale of love and loss, exploring our relationship with the divine Read more...

The author's prose is outstanding ... In its originality and intensity it bears comparison with John Berger and WG Sebald, both of whom enriched and extended the novel form

Captivating

.. beguiling ...