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Overview
Ross Monroe is a boxing railwayman with a weakness for get-rich-quick schemes. Kate Lyle is a headstrong young woman desperate to escape a nightmarish household. As mid-century India sheds its colonial skin and the shadow of violence rises, these young lovers find themselves facing their own "tryst with destiny."
In twenty-first-century London, Owen Monroe is writing this story of his parents' lives in an effort to avoid the problems in his own. But keeping past and present apart isn't easy, and before long Owen is deep in the one story he never wanted to tell....
Synopsis
"DUNCAN'S NOVEL HAS A CINEMATIC SCOPE....A STORY ABOUT LOVE AND THE STRANGE TWISTS OF DESTINY THAT LEAD US TO IT." San Francisco Chronicle Book review
Ross Monroe is a boxing railwayman with a weakness for get-rich-quick schemes. Kate Lyle is a headstrong young woman desparate to escape a nightmarish household. As mid-century India sheds its colonial skin and the shadow of violence rises, these young lovers find themselves facing their own "tryst with destiny."
In twenty-first-century London, Owen Monroe is writing this story of his parents' lives in an effort to avoid the problems in his own. But keeping past and present apart isn't easy, and before long Owen is deep in the one story he never wanted to tell....
"[Duncan] understands the human heart so deeply, lending a wise ear to both tenderness and treachery. This time around he weaves a brilliantly imagined tale of one family whose destiny is held hostage at an infamous historical crossroads." JULIA GLASS, National Book Award-winning author of Three Funes and The Whole World Over
"Duncan smartly tackles a swath of race issues, relationships, and sport amidst political turmoil....The Bloodstone Papers resonates most in its small, sad pangs: as a depiction of two promising lives that failed to turn out as expected." Entertainment Weekly
Brilliantly constructed....This is a deeply satisfying read." The Guardian(London)
The New York Times Book Review - Liesl Schillinger
Oh, what a character is Skinner! George Skinner—also known as Nelson Edwards—author of a sari-ripper called "Raj Rogue" (the adventures of a "sort of X-rated criminal Bond of the Raj") is an ace practitioner of the slipperiest form of "masculine seduction," the con. Skinner's guile runs like a magnetic seam through The Bloodstone Papers, compelling our attention, setting our curiosity atingle.
Editorials
The Independenton Sunday
‘Richly satisfying. Duncan manages to fuse racial and personal dislocation beautifully in this long, seductive narrative....A terrific yarn.’Alfred Hickling
[A] sprawling, ambitious work…it loops back and forth through history with remarkable lucidity… ultimately very moving.’Arena
Superb...Perhaps this book will finally bring him the mainstream recognition he deserves.The Guardian
"An appallingly intelligent writer"The Independent on Sunday
‘Richly satisfying. Duncan manages to fuse racial and personal dislocation beautifully in this long, seductive narrative....A terrific yarn.’Liesl Schillinger
Oh, what a character is Skinner! George Skinner—also known as Nelson Edwards—author of a sari-ripper called "Raj Rogue" (the adventures of a "sort of X-rated criminal Bond of the Raj") is an ace practitioner of the slipperiest form of "masculine seduction," the con. Skinner's guile runs like a magnetic seam through The Bloodstone Papers, compelling our attention, setting our curiosity atingle.—The New York Times Book Review
Dinita Smith
The Bloodstone Papers is an intriguing depiction of the complexities of dual identity…despite the novel's flaws, the relationship between father and son, and the story's ending, are models of a grand forgiveness, of a vision large and big-hearted. You keep on reading, fascinated by the descriptions of colonial India, and by the quandary of the Anglo-Indians' unstable, porous identity. It's of course an increasing predicament of globalization, and it's one of contemporary fiction's great themes.—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
A listless part-time teacher and writer of pornographic novels helps his elderly father quench a decades-old thirst for revenge in Duncan's sixth novel (after Death of an Ordinary Man). Anglo-Indian narrator Owen Monroe, long accustomed to his quasi-bohemian lifestyle in contemporary London, has been hearing from his father, Ross, for years about the devious Skinner, the English con man who, decades before, ruined Ross's Olympic boxing dreams. Though Skinner disappeared, Ross has never given up hope of finding him, but it is Owen's chance discovery in a library (a novel by a pseudonymous author Owen and Ross believe to be Skinner) that finally gives them a lead. Posing as a literary scholar, Owen tries to arrange an interview with the author, but ends up instead in bed (repeatedly) with the author's daughter, Janet. As Owen continues his investigation, Duncan cuts back to pre- and post-partition India, where Ross, a railroad worker, first encounters Skinner and eventually becomes unwisely involved in a scheme to boost freight from a train Ross and his longtime friend Eugene work on. The plan's consequences are far-reaching for all involved and propel the novel toward a surprisingly anticlimactic conclusion. Though the narrative sometimes feels coyly deceptive, Duncan's polished, merciless and frequently hilarious prose supplies a trove of pleasures all its own. (Aug.)
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