Green Glowing Skull

Green Glowing Skull
Gavin Corbett

A breathtakingly original, darkly comic, surprisingly contemporary and deeply surreal tale from the author of THIS IS THE WAY, Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year.After fleeing his dying parents and the drudgery of work in Dublin for the Manhattan of his imagination – a place of romance and opulence, dark old concert halls and mellow front parlours quieted by the hiss of the phonograph cylinder – Rickard Velily hopes to be reborn as an Irish tenor, and to one day be reunited with the love of his life.At the very peculiar Cha Bum Kun Club, a masonic-style refuge for immigrants who can’t quite cut it in New York City, he meets Denny Kennedy-Logan and Clive Sullis, and a plan is enacted: to revive the art songs and ballads of another time for a hip young city in thrall to technology and money.But that is without reckoning on meddlesome sprites, the phantoms of the past – and more malign forces who plot to subjugate the human race.Green Glowing Skull is a half-crazed brain-shunt of a trip around the spirit world, the cyber world and a woozily recognisable real world – a darkly comic tale of mythologies, machines and the metaphysical swirl.

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Copyright (#u2c9f8ffd-26e5-5b79-881e-f892e7753d9d)

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thestate.co.uk (http://4thestate.co.uk)

Copyright © Gavin Corbett 2015

Cover images © Angelo Morelli/Millenium Images, UK (main image); Shutterstock.com (skull)

Cover design © Kate Gaughran

The right of Gavin Corbett to be identified as the author

of this work has been asserted by him in accordance

with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780007594306

Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780007594337

Version: 2016-02-18

Dedication (#u2c9f8ffd-26e5-5b79-881e-f892e7753d9d)

For Lilian

Epigraph (#u2c9f8ffd-26e5-5b79-881e-f892e7753d9d)

A round unvarnished tale is that delivered to our representative by Mr. J.F. McCormack, the Irish tenor, who has just returned from St. Louis. Mr. McCormack’s narrative is a model of moderation, and contains ample internal evidence that he has exaggerated neither in one direction nor the other. From what came under his own observation it is plain that there were at least a couple of disgusting exhibitions of stage-Irishman antics … If the matter ended at what Mr. McCormack saw himself it would appear that there has been a good deal of high colouring in the charges levelled against the management of the theatre. The narratives of Mr. Digges, Mr. Ewing, and Miss Quinn, of the Irish Literary Theatre, have, however, yet to be obtained, and it may well be that they will supplement the facts related by Mr. McCormack.

From a report in The Dublin Evening Mail, July 21, 1904

A thought … will fly from us and only return again in the darkness crying in a thin, childish voice which we may not comprehend until, with aching minds, listening and divining, we at last fashion for it those symbols which are its protection and its banner.

JAMES STEPHENS, The Crock of Gold

Contents

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Title Page (#ulink_98d00c6a-6f27-5836-aaec-f5b1195c5c33)

Copyright (#ulink_d86cc77c-85ea-5a3b-b2eb-eb50182f2b4e)

Dedication (#ulink_6194e25a-3ab7-57ba-97d3-7bc3a5ea3d78)

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