Author:Anne Haverty
One Day As A Tiger tells the story of Martin Hawkins, a brilliant young historian, who turns his back on a promising academic career and returns to the family sheep-farm in Tipperary where he finds himself at odds with his conscientious brother, Pierce. Hostile to the people around him, and secretly in love with Pierce's restless wife, Etti, Martin begins to harbour strange convictions about an adopted lamb he calls Missy. One of a flock that has been 'improved' with the introduction of human genes, Missy starts to make significant impact on Martin's imagination. When Etti starts to share these sentiments, she and Martin embark on a reckless and terrible adventure.
It takes style, confidence and originality to pull off such an ostensibly wierd narrative, and Haverty displays all three. A crazily intelligent depiction of rural Ireland
—— Fiona Gray , Mail on SundayA novel written with enormous confidence and flair. It has a lightness and a sense of comic timing which is absent from most contemporary Irish fiction, but it also has a real sense of darkness and the grotesque
—— Colm ToibínA work of rare enchantment... Elements from the mainstream of Irish fiction... combine with the kind of magic realism one assiciates with Latin America. It is beautifully done. To that long list of Irish writers who write better English than the English, a new name can be added
—— David Robson , Sunday TelegraphA startlingly good novel... authentically tragic and unforgettable
—— Victoria Glendinning , Daily TelegraphSo good I promise you will want to read it more than once
—— Daily TelegraphLingering, sensuous and provocative, Christopher's unusual fantasy is a masterful exercise in the necromancy of poetry ripened into prose
—— Scotland on Sunday