McGuinness's montage of voices creates beautifully bleak first novel

Arimathea

**By Frank McGuinness**

**Brandon, €14.99**

**Reviewed by Joanne Hayden**

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Outside the Bible, there is no record of a place called Arimathea. In the Gospels, Joseph of Arimathea gives his own prepared tomb over to receive Jesus's crucified body. In Frank McGuinness's novel, a montage of voices that is filled with biblical motifs, home is emotionally as well as geographical ly determined, exile can take many forms and rare acts of kindness ...