Synopses & Reviews
From the acclaimed author of
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty and
Annie Dunne comes the compelling tale of a young man caught between the Great War and the battle for Irish independence.
Praised as a "master storyteller" (The Wall Street Journal) and hailed for his "flawless use of language" (Boston Herald), Irish author and playwright Sebastian Barry has created a powerful new novel about divided loyalties and the realities of war. In 1914, Willie Dunne, barely eighteen years old, leaves behind Dublin, his family, and the girl he plans to marry in order to enlist in the Allied forces and face the Germans on the Western Front. Once there, he encounters a horror of violence and gore he could not have imagined and sustains his spirit with only the words on the pages from home and the camaraderie of the mud-covered Irish boys who fight and die by his side. Dimly aware of the political tensions that have grown in Ireland in his absence, Willie returns on leave to find a world split and ravaged by forces closer to home. Despite the comfort he finds with his family, he knows he must rejoin his regiment and fight until the end.
With grace and power, Sebastian Barry vividly renders Willies personal struggle as well as the overwhelming consequences of war.
Review
"Barry is authentic and unflinching as a novelist of the war, neither sparing nor overdramatizing....Flawless, honest, humane, moving." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[A] compellingly sad, if difficult, read." Booklist
Synopsis
Readers meet Willie Dunne when he is still a gifted boy growing up in Dublin and follow him--through a diary and letters home--into battle during World War II where he must shoulder the unending internal damages of the war along with the hatred of his own countrymen for fighting for Britain.
Synopsis
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, a mesmerizing new novel from the award-winning author of The Secret ScriptureA first-person narrative of Lilly Bere’s life, On Canaan’s Side opens as the eighty-five-year-old Irish émigré mourns the loss of her grandson, Bill. Lilly, the daughter of a Dublin policeman, revisits her eventful past, going back to the moment she was forced to flee Ireland at the end of the First World War. She continues her tale in America, where—far from her family—she first tastes the sweetness of love and the bitterness of betrayal.
Spanning nearly seven decades, Sebastian Barry’s extraordinary fifth novel explores memory, war, family ties, love, and loss, distilling the complexity and beauty of life into his haunting prose.
Synopsis
Praised as a “master storyteller” (The Wall Street Journal) and hailed for his “flawless use of language” (Boston Herald), Irish author and playwright Sebastian Barry has created a powerful new novel about divided loyalties and the realities of war.
In 1914, Willie Dunne, barely eighteen years old, leaves behind Dublin, his family, and the girl he plans to marry in order to enlist in the Allied forces and face the Germans on the Western Front. Once there, he encounters a horror of violence and gore he could not have imagined and sustains his spirit with only the words on the pages from home and the camaraderie of the mud-covered Irish boys who fight and die by his side. Dimly aware of the political tensions that have grown in Ireland in his absence, Willie returns on leave to find a world split and ravaged by forces closer to home. Despite the comfort he finds with his family, he knows he must rejoin his regiment and fight until the end. With grace and power, Sebastian Barry vividly renders Willie’s personal struggle as well as the overwhelming consequences of war.
About the Author
Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. His play The Steward of Christendom won many awards and has been seen around the world. He is the author of the highly acclaimed novels The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty and Annie Dunne, and his most recent play, Whistling Psyche, premiered at the Almeida in London in 2004.