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Candlemoth | 
| Author: Roger Jon Ellory
Publisher: Orion Books Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £5.99
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New (27) Used (17) from £0.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  32 reviews
Sales Rank: 53952
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 391
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 1.1
ISBN: 0752859145
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
EAN: 9780752859149
ASIN: 0752859145
Publication Date: August 2, 2004
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 27 more reviews...
 Oooh...this guy's good... September 2, 2008
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 "Candle Moth" was his first published novel (there are apparently 22 unpublished sitting around) and I can't for the life of me see how it took so long for him to make the big time.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 times the historical exposition is a little obvious, but this is a great read. The only reason I dock it a star is that he's subsequently proven he can write even better.
 Dead Man Talking August 14, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
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. It is altogether different in its style, however, and in the emotions it engenders in its readers.
Most stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This one is a curiosity because in effect the reader knows the end before opening the first page; 36-year-old Daniel Ford is on death row in a South Carolina prison, having been tried and found guilty of the murder of his best friend some twelve years earlier. For most of the tale, then, the key questions are how, where, and above all why did he kill Nathan Verney? A singular oddity for me was that the story is told from a first-person perspective, making me constantly wonder how a dead man could be recounting the events of his life between 1952 - when at 6 years old he met Nathan - and 1982, with just a few hours to go before going to the electric chair. It turns out that although the end appears to be almost a foregone conclusion, the telling of that end is vivid, powerful and consummately makes up for the relatively genteel nature of most that had gone before, prior to Daniel's arrest around Christmas of 1969. Ellory succeeds in making you feel what it must be like to be weeks, days and finally just hours away from death.
While some of the political backdrops are too long drawn out in detail, there is no question that politics and racial prejudice lie right at the heart of the tale. Most relevant of all is the Vietnam conflict, and how Daniel and Nathan face up to the probability of being drafted into a war they both have no desire to be involved in. The other key issue is that Nathan is black, and in a part of the country with strong associations with the Ku Klux Klan, he faces harmful consequences when he simply goes out to a bar with his white friend, and takes even higher risks by having a white girlfriend - especially one with a father reputed to be a Klan king-pin. Yet another political topic central to all that goes on is the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy, and when all is said and done at the conclusion, it becomes apparent that all of the main characters, including Daniel's girlfriends, and most if not all of the political narrative are absolutely relevant to the story as a whole, even if some of the people and background events seem to have no bearing at the time of their mention.
The prose will be regarded as merely average by anyone who has read Ellory's most recent work, but the imagery of both the tranquillity of Greenleaf South Carolina, and the intimidating inmates and warders on death row make for gripping reading. There are, throughout this tale, emotive portrayals of love, lust, envy, betrayal, guilt, fear, joy, anger and utter hopelessness. For those familiar with Ellory's other novels this one does take a while before it really takes hold, and patience might be needed at times, but the pay-off is absolute and uncompromising, with an ending that few others can hope to match. Ultimately an intense, moving and memorable story.
Enthralling from start to finish! August 3, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
'Four times I've been betrayed - twice by women, once by a better friend than any man might wish for, and lastly by a nation..'
36 year old Daniel Ford, a convicted murderer is on death row for the murder of his best friend Nathan. With thirty six days before he faces the electric chair, piece by piece he relates his lifestory to the Prison Chaplin Father Rousseau. His story starts in rural North Carolina when in 1952, at six years old he meets Nathan. The two boys (one born white the other black) become best friends, their friendship lasting until Nathan's brutal murder 20 years later.
I really loved this. It was enthralling, with well drawn characters and covered the history of the period, the racism, political corruption and deaths of Martin Luther King and Kennedy in an informative way without being boring.
Great drama set against the backdrop of a changing America August 1, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is one of those novels where you feel everything the main character feels, as he looks back on a once-idyllic existence that somehow went horribly wrong. Highly recommended, as is A Quiet Belief in Angels, another of RJ's works.
Fabulous! July 12, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is RJ Ellory's first novel, published in 2004. After reading both A Quiet Belief In Angels and A Simple Act of Violence, I just knew I had to go and read his back catalogue.
Dealing with the story of two friends in 1960s and 70s southern America, I was gripped all the way through. Daniel is on death row, found guilty of murdering Nathan his best friend. Daniel is white and Nathan was black. The story starts with Daniel awaiting his execution and is related back to the reader when Daniel tells his story to Father Rousseau whilst in his cell.
The reader accompanies Daniel and Nathan on their journey through life, from meeting as 8 years old, having their first girlfriends, dodging the Vietnam draft whilst experiencing racism and hate along the way.
Roger Ellory is masterful in creating full developed, believeable characters and setting a scene so that you are transported there.
The momentum is really built up towards the end of the book, I raced through to the end, holding my breath along the way.
I also loved the story of Eve Chantry, the old woman in the town who the boys thought was a witch, yet turned out to be a great friend and influence on Daniel.
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