David Moloney of Lowell: Forthcoming Novel, High Praise

Bloomsbury Publishing will release David Moloney’s first novel, Barker House, in February 2020. He’s a Lowell resident and graduate of UMass Lowell and Southern New Hampshire University (master’s degree in creative writing). David’s novel has earned outstanding advance notices from well-known writers. He says the book “tells the story of nine guards inside and outside the walls of a county jail as they deal with loneliness and regret.”

Can I stop here and say it is not easy to get your first novel published by a notable publisher like Bloomsbury? The company has offices in New York, London, Sydney, and New Delhi. David is with the New York branch.

Novelist Elizabeth Strout has high praise for the novel: “Here is a voice to listen to! Moloney’s voice is as true as a voice can be. Concise, with the right details rendered perfectly, these sentences come to the reader with marvelous straight forwardness, clean as a bone. This book is about people that many in society may not notice, but they are here; this is a book we need.”

David studied with Andre Dubus III in the English Department at UMass Lowell. You will not read a stronger endorsement than Andre’s regarding this book: “In over thirty years of writing and teaching, I have not witnessed a stronger artistic debut than David Moloney’s; in fact, his novel, Barker House, does not remotely read like a debut, but more as the seasoned work of writer with enormous gifts. With a keen eye for essential detail and a playwright’s ear for dialogue, Mr. Moloney lays bare the inner workings of a county jail from the rarely told point of view of the jailers themselves, and he does so with a writerly passion utterly devoid of sentimentality or artifice of any kind. The result is a deeply satisfying work that will reach into the hearts and minds of many, many readers. This book heralds the arrival of a new and important voice among us.”

Finally, but certainly not the last we will be hearing in the run-up to the book launch, Tony Tulathimutte says, “At a time when mass incarceration is increasingly a feature of American life, David Moloney’s Barker House is a great and important book. Without romanticizing, demonizing, or candy-coating the work of his corrections officers, this book offers an experienced insider’s view of their lives, in stainless-steely prose that easily matches the best of Raymond Carver and John Fante.”