Despite the intriguing premise, excessive back-story and rehashing of Gordon's sexual conquests (however accurately they might resemble Lord Byron's) can grow tiring. Shelly is Gordon's neighbor and childhood best friend, but his feelings for her have remained platonic while she has fallen in love with him Keats is Shelly's trusted friend, though there are only glimpses of that friendship. Most of the story consists of Keats relaying Gordon's past adventures, including being sexually abused by his nanny, publishing a YA vampire book, seducing many women including his cousin and possibly his half-sister and briefly joining a Greek terrorist squad. Following Shelly's apparent suicide, Gordon and Keats steal her ashes and, fleeing Shelly's sexually abusive father, they take a boat out on Lake Erie to fulfill her last wishes. Patty’s Day parade that may or may not be linked to The Grail’s reemergence.īelfast, Ohio, blends a bit of magic realism, Irish mysticism and history, Catholicism, and Arthurian romance to tell a thrilling story of sacrifice, heroism, and redemption.Roth's imagining of poets Keats, Byron, and Shelly (a blending of Percy and Mary) in the present day centers almost exclusively on Byron, known as Gordon, despite being narrated by Keats.

Complicating matters, the assumption of his guardianship takes place against the backdrop of a terrorist attack on Cleveland’s massive St.

With a number of potential others possessing wicked designs for the sacred prize, Gal must outmaneuver his rivals to find and relocate the icon before they do. Gal is drawn reluctantly into playing a vital role in secretly relocating the most sought after and the holiest of missing Catholic relics, The Holy Grail, after it is revealed to be hidden in a salt mine two thousand feet beneath Lake Erie. John of Bath High School’s Joseph of Arimathea Society, a service organization dedicated to serving as pall bearers for the homeless deceased of the heavily-Irish suburb of Lakewood, Ohio. On a March weekend in Cleveland, two cataclysmic events reshape the life of Galahad (Gal) Lafferty, president of the St. My Fourth Novel, Belfast, Ohio is Now Available.

So shelly by ty roth