Where does Ireland get all these great authors?

books:


	• The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty Sebastian Barry Picador (UK), 1998 - 308 pages average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

I was not sure about this book until....

This book was a gift to me from someone who knows my love of the Irish and of writers from that country. I began it hesitantly, not sure of the country I was entering, until I got perhaps ten pages into the book. The protagonist was describing how his mother sliced bread:

"..She did it in a trice. In the sewing of a wren's mitten."

I never looked back. His writing is brilliant, evocative, heartbreaking.

Worth reading, more than once

So good that after I had read a library copy, I purchased my own so I could read it all over. This novel takes on indirectly (as in his more recent "A Long, Long Way From Home") Barry's own family's experience as Irish divided between serving the British and aiding those who rebelled against the King. The other reviewers here cover much of the plot, but I might add that a touch of magic realism near the explosive climax makes for a nice touch, and the tension between truth-telling and perceived loyalty moves the story of the modern-day Aeneas along his wanderings efficiently and poignantly.

Barry, also a poet and best known--at least before this novel--as a playwright, brings to his fictional characters a narrative style somewhat at odds with what one might expect. He's not Joyce, that is, striving for a correlative voice to match his character's interior musings. Rather, he takes the rich legacy of Joyce and makes it impel his own telling of the interior life of those that Barry finds empathy with, and whose inner as well as outer itineraries this author feels, you sense, he must tell. This impelling of a writer to find release through his creations makes for a very effective novel, indeed.

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AN INNOCENT ABROAD...

...and sure, Mark Twain would likely love the hero of this wonderful book. Eneas is truly an innocent - he never shies from hard work, he loves his family dearly, and (his gift and his damnation) he has no neither mind nor care at all, at all for the politicks. He's not really a simpleton, merely a simple man. Born in 1900, he comes of age with the Irish struggle for independence so vividly painted by events such as the Easter uprising of 1916. When his mates - especially his best boyhood friend, Jonno Lynch - are enlisting in the fight to throw off the British oppression, Eneas, finding it difficult to locate gainful employment, enlists first in the British Merchant Navy (which in itself might have been forgiven by those who deemed themselves his judges later), then in the Royal Irish Constabulary. The RIC being mainly a police force, Eneas couldn't see the harm in lending a hand in that quarter - but as the fight for independence grew more fierce and factional, the RIC was tied too closely in the eyes of some to the hated Tans, who were responsible for some right bloody work. Eneas, finding himself on a blacklist kept by those calling themselves patriots, is given a choice - get close to and kill the much-hated and feared Reprisal Man of the Tans, or suffer the consequences of a death sentence. Our hero cannot bring himself to kill a man, so he refuses - and when he sees that those who have threatened him with extinction mean just what they say, sees no other choice than to flee his beloved Sligo and his native Ireland altogether.

Thus his adventures and travels begin. He signs on with a merchant vessel and winds up in Galveston, Texas. He enlists with the British Army for World War II in order to save France (a country for whom he bears a great love, of unknown origins) from Hitler. After being shell-shocked on the beach at Dunkirk and lodging with a French farmer for a growing and harvesting season, he makes his way back to England, pays a quick visit to Ireland, then winds up in Nigeria, digging a canal for a British company. He finds the best friend of his life in the person of Harcourt, a Nigerian national he first meets on a boat heading to Ireland, then again in Nigeria. Harcourt's friendship becomes one of the true treasures of Eneas' life - and a lifelong friendship it is.

Barry's language and prose capture his characters, the setting and their story perfectly. The reader can't help but feel a great empathy for Eneas, and for others in the book as well. Through the story of one man - and a very believable story it is indeed - Barry lays bare the pain through which Ireland has passed in its journey to find itself. There's a lot of sadness to be found here - but there's a lot of joy as well, so.

Read this book - and read Barry's novel ANNIE DUNNE as well (even better, I think, but that's me...).

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journey through life

I was hesitant to read this book despite the recommendation of a friend and despite the accolades written here. How foolish. Reading this book was like sinking into a great mattress. I was near hypnotized by the beauty of the text which simply flowed. At times I was so overcome that I had to put the book down, the sadness of it all is wrenching. But never is the book depressing or is it hateful while describing the hate that people so easily engender. This is an extraordinary work.

Where does Ireland get all these great authors?

The Irish have always been known as great storytellers, but now they're all turning into great writers as well, and it seems they're coming out of the woodwork. Sebastian Barry's The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty places the protagonist in the small village of Sligo where he is an innocent among angry partisans. When he chooses to alleviate his problems of employment by taking a job with the Royal Irish Constabulary, the British-led police force, he irrevocably alters his life - as you might imagine! With beautiful language and ethereal descriptive passages, Barry allows readers to follow Eneas' travels and travails - all of us hoping for a happy ending.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

Recently lionized for his play The Steward of Christendom, Sebastian Barry was hailed by The New York Times for his "rare mark of theatrical greatness." The New Yorker called the play "a majestic work." Now, with this astounding first novel, he enters the territory of Frank McCourt and James Joyce. When Barry's hero, the romantic innocent Eneas McNulty, signs up to fight with the British in World War I. An Ireland wracked by the Troubles blacklists him as a traitor--and it is his childhood friend, Jonno, who has been ordered to assassinate him. He is pursued by IRA hit men across a lifetime, to Texas, Nigeria, Omaha Beach, and the remote Isle of Man. A modern-day Aeneas, he is a classical hero disguised beneath an ordinary, tragicomic life. His wanderings embody both the strife and glory of Ireland's history, in a book that, as the Irish Times wrote of his famous play, is "wonderful...lyrical and profound, extremely funny, extraordinarily observant...hauntingly sad."

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