Port Mungo (24 page)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

No man is an island, apparently, but by the middle of a book most writers get to feeling distinctly peninsular. In this we are deluded. We go into the room alone, and we stay in the room alone, but what happens there to a great extent depends on the web of support we enjoy outside the room. Here are the names of some of the people who, during the writing of this novel and its aftermath, have given me love, help, encouragement—recreational companionship—and to them I give my heartfelt thanks. Maria Aitken. Pempe Aitken. Max Blagg. Marti Blumenthal. Liz Calder. Peter Carey. Catriona Crowe. Jack Davenport. Gary Fisketjon. Michelle Gomez. Edward Hibbert. Sonny Mehta. Andrew O'Hagan. Ann Patty. Alexandra Pringle. Deborah Rogers. Edward St. Aubyn. Betsy Sussler. Lynne Tillman. Colm Tóibín. Binky Urban. Stewart Waltzer. And of course Helen, Steve, Judy and Simon McGrath.

ALSO BY PATRICK M
C
GRATH

Blood and Water and Other Tales

The Grotesque

Spider

Dr. Haggard’s Disease

Asylum

Martha Peake

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2004 by Patrick McGrath

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are
registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Part of chapter 3 previously appeared in slightly different form in
Bald Ego.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McGrath, Patrick, [date]

Port Mungo / Patrick McGrath.

p. cm.

1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Greenwich Village (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction.
3. British—Honduras—Fiction. 4. London (England)—Fiction.
5. Parent and child—Fiction. 6. Women painters—Fiction.
7. Art students—Fiction. 8. Honduras—Fiction. 9. Death—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3563.C3663P67 2004
813'.54—dc22 2003065898

eISBN: 978-1-4000-4302-6

v3.0