Modern Gods

Modern Gods
Nick Laird

A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARA powerful, thought-provoking novel about two sisters who must reclaim themselves after their lives are dramatically upended from one of our finest authorsAlison Donnelly has suffered for love. Still stuck in the small Northern Irish town where she was born, working for her father’s real estate agency, she hopes to pick up the pieces and get her life back together. Her sister Liz, a fiercely independent college professor who lives in New York City, is about to return to Ulster for Alison’s second wedding, before heading to an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea to make a TV show about the world’s newest religion.Both sisters’ lives are about to be shaken apart. Alison wakes up the day after her wedding to find that her new husband has a past neither of them can escape. In a rainforest on the other side of the planet, Liz finds herself becoming increasingly entangled in the eerie, charged world of Belef, the subject of her show, a charismatic middle-aged woman who is the leader of a cargo cult.As Modern Gods ingeniously interweaves the stories of Liz and Alison, it becomes clear that both sisters must learn how to negotiate with the past, with the sins of fanaticism, and decide just what the living owe to the dead. Laird’s brave, innovative novel charts the intimacies and disappointments of a family trying to hold itself together, and the repercussions of history and faith.

Copyright (#ulink_9f206fb7-102d-5634-a755-fa850890d96a)

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

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

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017

First published in the United States by Viking in 2017

Copyright © Nick Laird 2017

Cover design by Jack Smyth

Nick Laird asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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 e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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

Source ISBN: 9780008257354

Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008257347

Version: 2018-05-22

Dedication (#ulink_5baf4eb9-08ff-5154-85ab-2c1b807a18f0)

I.M. Carol Laird

(1950–2017)

Contents

Cover (#u11879222-d2c7-5a89-9e96-a0f4b9a80194)

Title Page (#ubda08212-4f3d-5b29-850a-9a874ce81788)

Copyright (#u6e3a8530-f810-5f1c-b7c0-a65d5e1c2288)

Dedication (#ucdc7a9c8-6b2c-5c01-978c-b66cc83ca6f7)

Prologue (#u562961d4-7e01-55ad-b1c0-824725e85e37)

Part 1: Six Nothings (#ude671c28-b2d6-5e5f-ae42-062742dcd05a)

Chapter 1 (#u1cae0bf0-eb79-5520-942b-e588e4abcae7)

Chapter 2 (#u8c24ccb7-6b57-566f-b57f-8e4024a18948)

Chapter 3 (#ube4de35a-820e-5657-abe9-43cff3f105e0)

Chapter 4 (#ua7b794cf-0da7-545f-99f3-d2dd95c67910)

Chapter 5 (#udd94d12c-e2f3-5520-8823-7143d4fb7a67)

Chapter 6 (#u4aca34df-5711-56be-9a2e-4034ea34fcd9)

Chapter 7 (#uf76ba499-f75d-53f2-afdf-ec014607b3b9)

Chapter 8 (#ue3ca1700-36b4-5fc3-b95c-5365d2200e46)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Part 2: In the Way That Fire Wanders (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)