Title: The Whipping Club
Author: Deborah Henry
Paperback: 312 pages
Publisher: T.S. Poetry Press (2 Feb 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0984553177
ISBN-13: 978-0984553174
Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14 x 2.4 cm
Product Description
The Whipping Club explores the sacrificial secrets we keep to protect our loved ones and the impact that uncovered secrets have on marriage, family and society. Both a wrenching family drama and a harrowing suspense story, it chronicles an interfaith couple’s attempt in 1960′s Ireland to save their son from corrupt institutions. “A powerful saga of love and survival.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Reviews:
The Whipping Club was selected for the O – Oprah Magazine July Summer Reading Club.
“Set in 1960′s Ireland, Henry’s riveting debut novel explores the far-reaching effects of a single decision.”
–Publisher’s Weekly
“Deborah Henry’s eloquent, magnificently designed novel . . . A story that will draw out every straw of emotion in your soul. This is the best novel I have read in three years.”
–Herald de Paris
“The Whipping Club is an intimate, assured first novel, the story of Marian McKeever and her child hidden by cruelty and custom. It rings with the authenticity of shame and courage. You can put it down but you will not forget it.”
—Jacquelyn Mitchard, best-selling author of The Deep End of the Ocean
“Deborah Henry is a natural storyteller and she is far more. Her novel The Whipping Club is a compelling read, but it also seriously explores the terrible ways the world –as a society, as individuals — often fails its children. And most importantly, her book offers a searingly lovely vision of how wrongs can be made right. Deborah Henry is a splendid young novelist who deserves a wide audience.”
—Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler
“The Whipping Club at once evokes a hauntingly beautiful literary landscape, engaging me immediately. Henry writes with great passion, deep vulnerability and sharpest prose about perils and plights, joy and triumph. Commanding a winsome literary voice, Henry would go far to tell many a tale. And she should.”
—Da Chen, best-selling author of Colors of the Mountain and Sounds of the River
“Exquisitely written, unflinching and spare, The Whipping Club is the haunting portrait of a family that challenges a system whose chilling atrocities toward children are at once beyond comprehension and altogether real. Deborah Henry is a gifted storyteller. The steely realism of her prose, her fiercely drawn characters and startling plot twists make The Whipping Club one of those rare novels that linger in the mind long after the last page is turned.”
—Dawn Tripp, best-selling author of Game of Secrets
“Harrowing, haunting, and brilliantly written, Henry’s stunner of a novel is about secrets, so-called sins, and the way even the deepest scars can begin to heal. So breathtakingly good it seems burned into your heart.”
—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You
“A story of survival, redemption, and the courage that is born of love. One of my favorite reads of the decade!”
—Susan Henderson, author of Up From The Blue
About the Author
DEBORAH HENRY’S first short story was published by ‘The Copperfield Review,’ was a historical fiction finalist for ‘Solander Magazine’ of The Historical Novel Society and was longlisted in the 2009/10 Fish Short Story Prize. ‘The Whipping Club’ is her first novel. She lives in Fairfield, Connecticut with her husband and their three children. She is currently at work on her next book. Visit her at http://www.deborahhenryauthor.com
