Birchwood Av John Banville

<p>Told with lyrical prose, John Banville's <i>Birchwood </i>is the elegiac story of the aristocratic decline of an eccentric family riddled with dark secrets.<br><br>Once the big house on an Irish estate, Birchwood has turned into a baroque madhouse for its ruined inhabitants. One disaster succeeds another, until young Gabriel Godkin runs away to join a travelling circus and look for his long-lost twin sister. Soon he discovers that famine and unrest stalk the countryside, and Ireland is ruined too.</p>