Life
1937-1989; b. Dublin; plays include Do Thrushes Sing in Birmingham? (Abbey 1963); Soldier (Peacock 1969); Strange Dreams Unending (RTÉ 1973); novels include Shell, Sea Shell (1982), opening bombing of Rotterdam by Germans; Tenebrae: A Passion (1985), regarded by some as a stylistic tour de force; also The Pale Moon of Morning (1995), concerning Timothy, a 14 yr.-old orphan taken in by the Phibbs, faded Anglo-Irish gentry, on death of his parents in 1930 and visited by an athletic German youth in Nazi days, and with homosexuality and swimming parties, culminating in a murder; d. reputedly of AIDS. DIW.
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Works
Plays, Do Thrushes Sing in Birmingham? (Abbey 1963); Soldier (Peacock 1969); Strange Dreams Unending (RTE 1973). Novels , Shell, Sea Shell (Dublin: Wolfhound Press 1982), and Tenebrae: A Passion (1985); The Pale Moon of Morning (Dublin: Wolfhound Press 1995), 219pp.
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Notes
Ulick O’Connor writes of his favourite summer books: ‘every year I take Liam Lynch’s Seashell Seashell, and wonder when he will be recognised as the writer of genius that he is. (Sunday Independent, 6 July 1997.)
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