Sebastian Barry – A Long Long Way

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A Long Long Way, Book Review, Easter Rising, Ireland, Irish writing, Sebastian Barry, World War I

Ireland Uprising and Down in the Trenches

For some reason I am drawn to read a lot of books, both factual and fictional, about the two major wars of the twentieth century. And each time I start one of those books, question why I am doing so ‘Have we not had enough of books about these wars?’ And the answer, sadly, seems to be ‘no’. Both conflicts created huge wounds both individually and collectively, and what those conflicts still have to teach us will probably not cease to be lessons needing learning, until all wars cease.

Barry is certainly one of the writers who is still able to reach out, meaningfully and in a new way, to the reader. There is something about Irish writers (and also, I think about some, though not as many, Scottish writers), whereby the rhythms of language, and the choice of words are very different from writers from England, and words therefore have a fresh power. Barry has that enviable ability to write about the particular and specific, in such a way that the particular transcends into the universal, and his well written central character, precise and particular, grows larger and larger into being Everyman, as Barry makes him more and more individual and known to us.

         Easter Uprising, Dublin, 1916

A Long Long Way starts with a Dublin family, with young Willie Dunne, one of a close-knit family, shortly before the start of World War 1, and takes him through the war, and also ties this up with the 1916 Easter Uprising. So it examines that war from the perspective of Irishmen, Irish Regiments, and the promise of Home Rule. Soldiers were enlisting to fight for Irish independence at the end, as much as for the freedom of poor little Belgium, or against ‘the Hun’. The conflict between Ulster and the South glimmers through.

At the start of the novel, Barry’s spare, cut back prose, his short sentences, shot through with surprising and memorable phrases and images, produced an effect on me as if I was reading a fairy-tale. Curiously reminded me of that wonderful Scottish writer of Faerie, George McDonald, The Princess and The Goblin,  The Princess and Curdie.(Puffin Classics)

I say this not to denigrate Barry, its actually the reverse, its about the ability to tell a story in such a way that the reader knows a more universal story is being told. His language is beautiful, images and phrases we may have come across a thousand times are put together in a startlingly new way. Who would ever have thought to describe the dropping of bombs in the trenches this way, for example:

There were bombs falling everywhere now, in an industrial generosity

This juxtaposition, this surprising and many layered choice of phrase ‘industrial generosity’ – this gives certainty to what I later found out – Barry is a poet. Of course, this is what poets do – they new mint the world for us

The sun lay along objects with indifferent and democratic grace, gun-barrel or ploughshare. The war was like a huge dream at the edge of this waking landscape, something far off and near that might ruin the lives of children and old alike, catastrophe to turn a soul to dry dust

He is not a self-consciously beautiful writer, he is a writer who makes you see clear, feel fresh, interpret the world anew. Before change, we must be able to interpret!

This is a book I know i will re-read – because of that poet’s vision, and the ability to tell the story, to weave. In many ways my response to Barry has been as profound as to another Celtic poet novelist, the Scot Andrew Greig. His novel about the second world war That Summer about the Battle of Britain and the Home Front, is a book which has stayed with me, even though i read it several years years ago, and for similar reasons as I think this one will.

A Long, Long Way Amazon UK
A Long, Long Way Amazon USA

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William Boyd – Waiting for Sunrise

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Book Review, Vienna, Waiting for Sunrise, William Boyd, World War I

A very very welcome return to form

I started this a little anxiously, as Boyd’s previous Ordinary Thunderstorms had been deeply disappointing from such a usually reliably fascinating writer. But very quickly, I realised I had gone back to being safe again, in Boyd’s expert hands.

As in Any Human Heart and The New Confessions we have an examination of the early part of the last century, and a sense of what it might mean to be English by the experience of a character who is for at least part of the time of the novel, outside England. We have, again, a world linked to the arts, in this case, theatre, with his central character, Lysander Rief, an actor, and this character shares other similarities with those previous Boyd protagonists – a flawed man, a man who is in some senses morally ambiguous, but nevertheless has a strong moral code. His weakness is sexual, in terms of a strong susceptibility to the charms of a particular woman with a much greater moral ambiguity than his own.

Palais Wittgenstein, Vienna 1910 Wiki Commons

Set initially in Vienna, in 1913, and ending in London, whilst the First World War is heavily progressing, this is, above all a novel of disguise, of the wearing of masks, of subterfuge, hypocrisy, falsehoods and lies – those one tells oneself, those one does not know one tells oneself, and those one deliberately tells others. It starts with the masks and delusions of the self – the actor, the professional wearer of masks, in Vienna to consult an early disciple of Freud’s (who also makes a brief appearance in these pages) Rief is there to uncover a falsehood in himself, and his analyst finds a cure for the problem by the device of creating another falsehood, a new (false) view of an old reality, – a false memory syndrome which helps, if you like. Cured as far as the original problem which took him to Vienna, our hero embarks on a relationship with a febrile fellow patient. No spoiler, its pretty obvious where this is going, right from the start

                              Gustave Klimt The Kiss Wiki Commons

Entering into choppy waters (again, its rather obvious what is going to happen, given the knowledge that the First World War is brewing) our hero is encountered by some mysterious strangers who are part of the British Embassy set, and its very obvious they will find a use for the mask-wearing talents of our actor, and recruit him to a field where the ability to convincingly wear masks is crucial – espionage.

This is not Ian Fleming spying, because our hero is not invincible, is far from being suave and sophisticated, and is often, quite out of his depth, and with no understanding of the game he is playing.

It had me gripped and admiring to the very end, the plot, and the emotional twists, and the self-realisation twists of our flawed, but likeable main character, more honest than the series of masks worn by some of the other characters. An unresolved, and totally accurate ambiguity throughout, really.

Waiting for Sunrise Amazon UK
Waiting for Sunrise Amazon USA