La Moglie Che Dorme

A Name for Himself

RECENSIONI

A virtuoso performance from a writer of enormous promise.
Sunday Telegraph A Name For Himself
A Name For Himself highlights the exceptional and unfathomable depths of what we nonchalantly dimiss as the ordinary, the normal, the everyday. In the deft hands of Dunne, the ordinary becomes story-worthy.
Irish Times A Name For Himself
Dunne writes compellingly about obsessive love, showing how apparently normal states of mind can shade into madness.
The Times A Name For Himself
A startling struggle-of-love study…Dunne’s Dublin dialogue is deft, her writing sings.
She A Name For Himself
Elegant, lucid prose…with depth, intelligence and a few surprises.
Irish Times A Name For Himself

A Name for Himself followed In the Beginning in 1998.

I was very conscious that I wanted to do something significantly different with my second novel. I had already seen many writers being ‘pigeon-holed’ because of the success of their first book, and I was determined to flex my writing muscle as much as possible – something I have consistently tried to do throughout my career.

A Name for Himself is the story of a loner, Farrell, a man who has survived a fractured childhood. He searches for love, and finds it with Grace, the daughter of his employer. But issues of class and emotional and mental fragility threaten to destroy their relationship.

In his desire to protect the woman he loves, Farrell gets caught up in the violence of an obsession, and the results are catastrophic for both of them.

In this novel, what interested me most was the exploration of the psychological states that drive people to do destructive things – both to those they love and to themselves.

A Name for Himself was short-listed for the Kerry Fiction Prize in 1998. It was also published in Italian and Danish.