Honore de Balzac

Olivia McCannon

A witty and reflective look at a society driven by social ambition and lust for riches-in a brilliant new translation. Eugene wants to get on in the world. So he has come to Paris, where the streets teem with chancers, criminals, and social climbers-and everyone is out for what he can get. When he finds a place to stay at a shabby boarding house, he sees the potential to make a fortune in two beautiful, aristocratic women who visit the lonely old lodger Goriot. Could they bring Eugene the status and acceptance he craves? Nothing is as it seems in Paris, however, and soon he is over his head in a world of greed and obsession.

Old Man Goriot

Olivia McCannon's first collection explores life on the edge of possibility: in one moment the familiar is blown open, we plunge into the unknown. A chance meeting seals a lifetime; a girl leaps from a window, away from safety - she wanted to see what can happen'. From families improvising a living space in Cairo's City of the Dead, to a veteran of the Normandy landings coming home to the peaceful reparation of glueing, welding, soldering', life is luminous, and resolutely seized. The closing sequence follows the last months of the poet's mother's life. A journey into grief and loss, it pays tribute to the courage of refusing false comfort, the strength that in the end enables us to live between the lines / of tombs'.

Olivia McCannon

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