Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780752856667
ISBN: 0752856669
Label: Orion
Manufacturer: Orion
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: July 17, 2003
Publisher: Orion
Studio: Orion

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
Roger John Ellory's Candlemoth makes a decent but not entirely successful stab at being several novels. It is a protest against the death penalty and about inhuman treatment of prisoners that dramatises both issues by showing us Daniel, who has been railroaded to the electric chair over the brutal murder of his best friend. Inevitably though, Daniel is so passive and battered by his situation that the book can show us little except his pain. Offstage, it is a thriller about the process whereby he was framed and might be acquitted, but Ellory de-emphasises this aspect of the plot in favour of Daniel's suffering.

Much of the book is taken up in a memoir of the 60s, when Daniel and his best friend Nathan had a relationship that crossed racial boundaries in a south torn by conflict and when they went on the run to avoid being drafted into an unjust war. The book is vivid in its sense of the time, but again there is a sense of Daniel as someone who never really lives his own life--even in love and friendship he is the person to whom emotions and events happen. --Roz Kaveney




Rating: - A Gem
For the whole of Candlemoth - the first of Roger Ellory's novels I've read - I lost entirely the sense of "reading", I was in the novel with the characters, watching them from a distance. It's a measure of the authenticity of the writing that sometimes - during the prison scenes especially - that became distinctly uncomfortable and unsettling. I wanted to look away, and couldn't. Meet Mr West. I haven't forgotten him yet. He'll probably haunt the next three novels I read.

And sometimes ... Read More

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Rating: - Ellory fan.
If you have been hooked by Ellory, this in my opinion, is his best.
I thought it was very well written and the main character's story absorbing.

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Rating: - Oooh...this guy's good...
Just finished this and I can't believe this guy's work isn't more widely known. R J Ellory is a quality act. It's great to see "A Quiet Belief in Angels" in the bestsellers and anyone who enjoyed that isn't going to be disappointed with his back catalogue either. "Candle Moth" was his first published novel (there are apparently 22 unpublished sitting around) and I can't for the life of me see how it took so long for him to make the big time.
The prose here isn't as refined as his new novels and at ... Read More

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Rating: - Dead Man Talking
Roger Jon Ellory made his big breakthrough in 2007 with A Quiet Belief in Angels which has gone on to become one of the best-selling books in the nation. There's a lot more to this Brummie lad than just that one novel though, and most people going through his back-catalogue as a response to his blockbuster success are finding that his outstanding writing skills are evident here in his debut, which again spans most of the lifetime of a single man in the south-eastern USA through the 1950s, 1960s and beyond. ... Read More

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Rating: - Dead Man Talking
Roger Jon Ellory made his big breakthrough in 2007 with A Quiet Belief in Angels which has gone on to become one of the best-selling books in the nation. There's a lot more to this Brummie lad than just that one novel though, and most people going through his back-catalogue as a response to his blockbuster success are finding that his outstanding writing skills are evident here in his debut, which again spans most of the lifetime of a single man in the south-eastern USA through the 1950s, 1960s and beyond. ... Read More

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