Book description
This is the story of Joseph Meehan, born cruelly handicapped and known
to the world as “the crippled boy”. Filled with insight into the soul
inside a broken body and warm with the beauties of the Irish landscape
it is the story of Joseph's fight to escape the restrictions and
confines of his existence. Under the Eye of the Clock can also be read
as the autobiography of its author, Christopher Nolan. Christy Nolan
was born in Mullingar, Ireland, on 6 September 1965. Unable to talk,
walk or use his hands due to cerebal palsy, he could communicate only
via a special computer and keyboard, using a so-called 'unicorn stick'
to painstakingly tap each letter as his mother cradled his head. He
published his first book, a collection of poetry called A Dam-burst of
Dreams, in 1981. In 1987, he published an autobiographical novel, Under
the Eye of the Clock, which won the Whitbread Award. A stage version of
the novel, called Torchlight and Laser Beams and written with the
theatre director Michael Scoot, was shown at the Edinburgh Festival in
1988. His next novel, The Banyan Tree, was published in 1999 by Orion.
Christy Nolan died in Dublin on 20 February, 2009. At the time of his
death he was working on another novel, which remains unfinished.
