McGrath, Patrick

New York. 1988. February 1988. Poseidon Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket.Remainder Mark. 067164405x. 1st Book. 192 pages. hardcover. Jacket design & painting by Wendell Minor. Signed by the Author. keywords: Literature England Horror. FROM THE PUBLISHER - Patrick McGrath is a Poe for the ‘80s, the first postmodern-gothic storyteller. Drawn from the mind's most unruly nightmares and macabre alcoves, his elegantly bizarre short fiction is laden with shimmering images of sensuality: a doomed beauty rises from a warm tub surrounded by swirling clouds of vapor; a mysterious stranger strips naked, revealing the secret of his loneliness-his kinship with the angels. McGrath's fictional inquiries move from the bugaboos of Victorian superstition and Freudian psychology to the curse of human desire, from English estates to the dark, savage Congo to the downtown bohemia of Manhattan after midnight. In ‘The Black Hand of the Raj,' set against colonial India's dizzying heat, a young woman finds pain-and pleasure-at the hand of an ancient curse. In ‘The Skewer,' an elderly man is haunted by the torments of three miniature psychiatrists, including Freud himself In ‘Ambrose Syme,' a young Jesuit sublimates his passion with poetry and soothes it . . with murder. Touched with subtle humor and irony, rich with erudite atmospheric prose, BLOOD AND WATER AND OTHER TALES is the extraordinary debut of a writer who stretches the limits of gothic horror-creating unforgettable literature. inventory #24854 ISBN: 067164405x.