The Story

'Sometimes now the outside world and his previous existence seemed a chimera. The only reality was the room with its apple-green walls and white sloped ceiling. His family were intruders, insubstantial wraiths out of a dream world, coming and going through the mist, solid and corporeal enough while they were there, fading into tenuity when they left.'

Set in Ardeevan sanatorium in the 1950s, when tuberculosis was still a major cause of death in Ireland - whole families were often blighted by the disease - The Charnel House is a powerful study of the twilight existence of the chronically and terminally ill.

Bringing together a wide and varied set of characters - Richard Cogley and his sister Eileen, the eccentric Commander Barnwell, young lovers Vincent and Lilly, hospital joker Arty Byrne, homosexual Phil Turner, and the embittered Frank O'Shea - Eamonn McGrath compassionately charts their relationships as they confront pain and death.

Raging 'against the dying of the light', this is not only a novel about tuberculosis but also a deeply felt examination of the nature of suffering and the unexpected strength of the human spirit.

Published by BlackStaff Press, 1990 - Buy at Amazon