Love, death and redemption a winning combination

WHEN, in 2009, Simon Van Booy’s highly acclaimed second collection, Love Begins In Winter, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, a major new talent was announced to the world. Once you become attuned to the wistful elegance of his prose, there can be no escape. A creator of masterful set pieces, he concerns himself not only with the vagaries and metaphysics of love, but also with the leftover lives of those people who live beyond the edges and the small, good things which help them endure. Few writers of the current generation weave such snares with words.

Now, for the first time, Mr Van Booy has expanded his grand humanistic vision to novel length. Everything Beautiful Began After, tackles the big themes of love, death and redemption, and mines beauty and truth where neither might rightfully seem to exist.