Boyne Water

The Boyne Water: The Battle of the Boyne, 1690 by Peter Berresford Ellis, 152 pages

In 1690, the deposed Catholic King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, James II, backed by France's Louis XIV, seized control of Ireland and attempted to use it as a stepping stone to reclaim his throne from his Protestant son-in-law, William of Orange.  William landed his primarily English and Dutch troops in northern Ireland, and James resolved to use his largely Irish and French army to block William's advance on Dublin at the river Boyne.  The battle was brief, James' forces were routed, and James himself made the defeat seem decisive by returning to France rather than attempting to carry on the fight in Ireland, where his supporters would continue to resist until the Battle of Aughrim the following year.  By the 19th century, the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne became the occasion for annual celebrations by Irish Protestants, and the Battle itself became understood as one of the turning points of Irish history.

According to Peter Berresford Ellis, this is all very exaggerated.  In the context of the Williamite Wars, he argues, it is Aughrim which was the final, decisive defeat, but even more importantly he sees the Jacobite cause as alien to Ireland itself.  Ellis contends that while James was able to rouse the Irish Catholics to his side, his restoration would have had little effect on the course of Irish history.  Indeed, insofar as the struggle was a personal one between rival claimants to the throne, Ellis' sympathy is entirely with William, who conducted his campaign in Ireland with dash and daring, in stark contrast to James, who proved timid and uncertain.

It is precisely in his portrayal of the individuals involved in the battle that Ellis is at his best, presenting an array of memorable characters, from William's grizzled, grumpy general the Duke of Schomberg to the bold cavalier, James' bastard son the Duke of Berwick.  As a result, the narrative of the battle proves highly interesting despite the author's claims that it was not tremendously historically significant.

Hell or Connaught!

Hell or Connaught!: The Cromwellian Colonisation of Ireland 1652-1660 by Peter Berresford Ellis, 252 pages

Catholic Ireland revolted against the Protestant rule of Charles I in 1641.  By 1644 the Irish were supporting the King against Parliament, and after the execution of the King in 1649 the Roundhead army arrived in Ireland to end resistance by fire and sword and, most deadly of all, starvation.  Hundreds of thousands of Irish, perhaps as much as a quarter of the population, perished and thousands more were enslaved and transported to the New World.  In Ireland itself, the decision was made to isolate the native Catholic population in the province of Connaught, the northwestern quarter of the island, with the lands thus depopulated to be given as pay for the Commonwealth soldiery and the London investors who backed the campaign.

The story of this decision, the effort made trying to put it into effect, and the pain it engendered are the primary themes of Ellis' history of the period.  There are other important narratives here, too, including the impact of land speculation, the religious sectarian divides among the colonists, the internal politics of the Commonwealth, ultimately resulting in its end, and the disappointments of the Restoration.  Ellis tells these stories, and more, including the long running personal feud over the survey of Ireland, in a straightforward manner that nevertheless manages to incorporate primary sources and contemporary poetry to provide a complete picture of a crucial moment in Irish history.

Nostos

Nostos by John Moriarty, 698 pages

"Nostos", I am told, means "homecoming", in particular referring to the homecomings of the heroes of the Trojan War.  In John Moriarty's poetic memoir, his particular home is an impoverished farm in the Irish countryside, a shadowy place of earth and blood, far from the seemingly well-ordered certainties of modernity.  He is exiled from this place by Darwin and his companions, whose arrival was as fatal to the old European mythos as that of Cortes was to the Aztecs.  His restless wanderings take him first to England, then to Greece, and finally to the New World, through myths both ancient and modern, before he is allowed to return at last to that still point he left in his beginning.

It is natural to compare Nostos to Finnegan's Wake, not only because the authors are both Irish, or because both delight in wordplay and allusion and repetition, or because the Liffey features in both works, or even because Moriarty explicitly references Joyce repeatedly.  Both attempt to describe something that eludes description, to discover or recover something mysterious yet fundamental, although Moriarty's commodius vicus of recirculation begins and ends upriver of Howth Castle and environs, and even beyond Eve and Adam.  Nostos is a unique and unforgettable work, full of beauty and wonder and (best of all) hope.

Becoming Finola

 

Becoming Finola by Suzanne Strempek Shea    336 pages

I re-read this book about once a year, just because I like it and want to revisit it -- and it's a nice story. 

Newly unemployed Sophie has kept herself busy by holding together her recently widowed friend, Gina, so when Gina proposes they both go on a much-needed vacation, Sophie is happy to oblige. However, after one day spent in the charming small town in Ireland, Gina is ready to go home. But she implores Sophie to stay, so Sophie does, accepting a job offer on a whim in the village's craft shop: Finola O'Flynn. Sophie soon learns Finola is a bit of a legend in this town and when she takes on her old job in the shop, Sophie also takes on other things: Finola's house, her left-behind wardrobe . . . and then Liam, Finola's discarded boyfriend.  But what happens when Finola suddenly returns?

This is an easygoing read with some humor, and plenty of descriptions to make you want to move to a small town in Ireland and work in a craft shop (at least, it never fails to make me want to do this). It's a bit of a slow start, but I find that sometimes, it's nice to revisit this story that's a bit of endearing escapism.

The Irish Game

The Irish Game by Matthew Hart   205 pages

This is an occasionally entertaining true recounting of a series of heists of the Beit art collection at Russborough House in Ireland. In addition to gangsters, Matthew Hart gives us a rogue English Heiress, the IRA, the FBI, Interpol, Scotland Yard, and of course, the Irish Garda. 

In the annals of art theft, no case has matched-for sheer criminal panache-the heist at Ireland's Russborough House in 1986. The Irish police knew right away that the mastermind was a Dublin gangster named Martin Cahill. Yet the great plunder -including a Gainsborough, a Goya, two Rubenses, and a Vermeer- remained at large for years. Cahill taunted the police with a string of other crimes, but in the end it was the paintings that brought him low. The challenge of disposing of such famous works forced him to reach outside his familiar world into the international arena, and when he did, his pursuers were waiting. 

One criticism about the book is that Hart distilled all the artistic facts, multiple biographies, Irish history, and police procedure into a single story that ultimately confused with too many narratives and tangents. In his effort to lay bare the minutia, he created a story that rambled and was bogged down by too much information to be entertaining. One such example is the inclusion of chapters on two other major art heists, one at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and the theft of Edvard Munch's The Scream from the National Gallery of Norway. Although they are great heists with tenuous relevance to this story, they distract from the narrative flow, especially near the end of book as the sting operation to take down Cahill plays out.

Posted by: Regina C.  

My Father Left Me Ireland

My Father Left Me Ireland: An American Son's Search for Home by Michael Brendan Dougherty, 217 pages

It's a cliche - the American travelling to Ireland to visit a "homeland" his family left generations ago.  For Michael Brendan Dougherty, however, Ireland is closer than that, for not only was his mother of Irish descent, his father was from Dublin, and after siring his son he returned and started a permanent family there.  Back in America, Dougherty's mother nurtured her son with Irish culture, even taking the trouble to learn Gaelic.  It's another cliche - the outsider who had to fight for his inheritance and therefore values it more highly than those who received it as an undoubted birthright.  Yet Dougherty's story of coming to terms with his father's absence - and even more important, his invisible presence - is so compellingly personal that cynicism surrenders.  

My Father Left Me Ireland takes the form of a series of open letters from Dougherty to his father, centering both on their personal history and on the history of the Easter Rising.  Through this lens, the author explores what he characterizes as "an age of disinheritance", revealing the illusions of those "realists" who imagine fatherhood to be a biological accident and nationhood a geographical accident.  What is really Real, he discovers, is built on and through sacrifice.

Orchid & the Wasp

Orchid & the Wasp  by Caoilinn Hughes   345 pages

It is clear from the writing style that the author is a poet, and the language and focus on the “art” aspect of writing often detracts from the story, as does the protagonist in the is coming-of-age novel. Gael Foess is an intelligent, articulate, opinionated and dislikeable child, and not much better as an adult. She operates alongside beautiful inspiring art while also stealing, manipulating and conning people and situations around her. The novel, narrated by Gael, spans about nine years: a politically turbulent decade that opens with Iraq War protests and closes with the Occupy movement in New York City. The financial crisis temporarily jolts Gael and Guthrie’s father, Jarleth, a high-flying Barclay’s banker who leaves the family in 2008. The biblical parable of the talents, which he recounted to Gael when she was a little girl, comes back to resonate: It’s a potent reminder that money and skills don’t get distributed fairly in this life. When Gael gets to New York in 2011, she plans to redress the balance in two paradoxical ways: living in the Occupy camp and taking part in protests; and secretly earning her brother a fortune on his modern art. 

Written in heart-stoppingly vivid prose, Orchid & the Wasp examines how we inevitably fail our families despite our best intentions; what we are owed and what we must earn; and how our lives can turn us into people we would never have imagined. While this publisher’s précis lured me in, I so disliked Gael’s character, that I struggled through the story, cringing at absolutely everything she did (with the exception of her 11 year-old self trying to set up a business of persuading school girls to break their hymens and then buy supplies of blood “virginity” capsules). While the author tries to tackle a range of societal issues, ultimately her writing style and lack of focus make this rambling story difficult to enjoy.

Posted by:   Regina C.  

A Few of the Girls

A Few of the Girls by Maeve Binchy      Audio Book: 11 hours     Hardback Book:  336 pages         

If I had to describe Maeve Binchy’s writing in one word, it would be, “touching.”     Her stories are funny – laugh out loud at times – sometimes, so deeply sad when she introduces you to the occasional character that is desperately lonely or whose life seems so unfair, so unfulfilling or so unjust you will feel the person’s pain even taste the salt of their tears she is an extremely clever writer because she captures not just the reader’s attention, but, more so, the reader’s emotions.    Irish culture is so vibrant and Maeve brings the reader right into the midst of it in such a beautiful way.   Her words are like pixies here, there and back again but always magical and fun, even in her melancholy characters there is still some sunshine to their lives, just not always enough to suit them.    To give you an idea of the fun in all of her stories she once said, “In Irish etiquette it is said that when you hold a dinner party you should always invite four talkers and four listeners but no one in Ireland knows four listeners!”   Lovely lady.    The written word is sadder for her passing (2012), but lucky for the works she left us with.   Wonderful author.  Great stories to be found here.   A treasure.

The Edge of Lost

The Edge of Lost by Kristine McMorris  352 pages

I picked up this book based on the cover. In the background is Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, the island prison in San Francisco Bay. I had just returned from the Bay area and was eager to hold onto its sights and sounds as long as I could.

The story opens on Alcatraz in 1937. Inmate 257 tends his greenhouse at the warden’s home.  He strains to hear the sounds of a search for a prison guard’s missing ten-year-old daughter. Alcatraz inmates were only known by their number. On the outside, Inmate 257 was known as Tommy Capello. However, that was not his real name.

The story shifts to Dublin in 1919. Shanley Keagan (Shan) is a twelve-year-old orphan living with an abusive uncle. Shan can sing, do impressions, and tell jokes. He becomes a regular in his uncle’s pub and other pubs around the city. When he discovers a letter from his departed mother, he realizes that his father is not dead. He is an American; Shan is elated. He’s also eager to find him and a make a new home. With his uncle forced out of business and failing health, the two decide to go to America.

The ship-ride over is harrowing. When the boat finally docks in New York, Shan is alone. He meets an Italian-American family returning from a protracted visit to Italy. The family adopts you Shan and he grows up as any young Italian-American boy would. The story follows Shan-now-Tommy over the next twenty years. Tommy and his new family become close. In an effort to help his brother Nick , when they are both adults, Tommy ends up convicted of murder and is transferred to Alcatraz.

I was disappointed that two-thirds of the story took place in New York. I was really looking forward to reading about Alcatraz during its heyday and feeling the cold Bay breeze gently brush against my cheeks as I immersed myself in the tale.

I enjoyed the story a lot; it was a quick and easy read, not one that I found easy to put down once I started.  But my disappointment in the story’s locale forces me to give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Irish Way

The Irish Way, edited by Frank Sheed, 343 pages

A collection of biographical essays by Irish authors on holy men and women of "the island of saints and scholars", The Irish Way was published in the momentous year of 1932, the year of the International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin and the 1500th anniversary of the beginning of St Patrick's mission to the Irish.  The accumulated essays amply demonstrate how the legacy of St Patrick's mission inspired the Irish missionaries who over the centuries served the Church heroically in Scotland, Lombardy, Paraguay, England, and the United States.  It is a remarkable experience to read of Patrick's untiring journeys throughout Ireland, shadowed everywhere by threats of assassination, to save the souls of the people from the fires of Hell, and then read of the Franciscan friar Michael O'Clery's equally restless travels a thousand years later, shadowed everywhere by threats of arrest and execution, to save the history of the people from the fires of the Reformation.  It is exceptionally poignant to read Alice Curtayne's lyrical descriptions of the beautiful Irish countryside as Fr Thaddeus Moriarty follows his Master down his own via dolorosa.  It is inspiring to read side-by-side the parallel lives of Catherine McAuley and Mary Aikenhead as they labored to found the Sisters of Mercy and the Irish Sisters of Charity in the troubled nineteenth century, and humbling to follow Margaret Hallahan, an orphaned serving maid, as she struggled to restore a sense of the sacred amongst newly emancipated Catholics in England. 

Although The Irish Way is less literarily distinguished than its successor volume The English Way, it is more unified and cohesive.  This is less the result of an overall plan than the nature of the subject - the story of how the Irish people "having been despoiled of all the precious things by which nations keep their souls alive, all except one, remained vitally a nation, a fact explicable only by some extraordinary quality in their Catholicism, in the special Irish Way of being Catholic."

Poems of Joseph Mary Plunkett

The Poems of Joseph Mary Plunkett by Joseph Mary Plunkett, 95 pages

Joseph Plunkett was a poet, a journalist, and an officer in the Irish Republican Brotherhood.  One of the ringleaders of the Easter Rising, he cemented his romantic legend by participating in the revolt despite a severe illness that left him almost entirely incapacitated.  Captured and convicted of treason, he married his fiancee in prison the day before his execution.  He was 28.

The Poems of Joseph Mary Plunkett is a collection of his published and unpublished poetry, with a biographical introduction by his sister and a closing essay by Plunkett himself on the subject of "Obscurity and Poetry".  This last is the best contribution to the book.  The poems are sadly undistinguished despite drawing upon a wealth of religious and mythological imagery, and often awkward in form.

Easter 1916

Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion by Charles Townshend, 359 pages

One hundred years ago, a small force of armed men (and a surprisingly large number of women auxiliaries) seized control of the center of Dublin on Easter Monday and proclaimed the birth of the Irish Republic.  The British authorities, at first taken entirely by surprise, soon responded vigorously, and within a week the rebels were dead, under arrest, or in hiding.  The surviving ringleaders were almost all executed as traitors to the King.  But many Irish continued to recognize the Republic as the legitimate government of Ireland, and the Easter Rising became the inspiration for a guerrilla war which led to independence - though not as a republic - five years later.

A history of the Rising is difficult for a number of reasons.  The near-mythic status of the Rising as the founding event of Irish Independence and the subsequent prominence of participants like Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera clouded the memory of what actually happened even for people who were there.  Furthermore, the secrecy surrounding the planning of the insurrection and the subsequent deaths of everyone involved in that planning leave unanswered key questions - most importantly, whether the planners understood at the outset that the Rising had no real chance of success, and therefore whether it was a doomed struggle or blood sacrifice.

Townshend is fully cognizant of these difficulties, manages to overcome many of them, and is candid when they are insurmountable.  One of his central concerns is placing the Easter Rising into the broader context of World War I.  Obviously, for the Irish nationalists "England's difficulty" was "Ireland's opportunity", but this created tremendous pressure among nationalists who believed it was "now or never", and splintered the nationalist movement between those who believed in a self-governed Ireland within the UK and the republicans who demanded total separation.  The War also aggravated the economic differences between Ireland and England, while the simultaneous establishment and suspension of Home Rule eviscerated the moderates' support, and the continuing threat of mass conscription not only contributed to the radicalization of the populace but also the Catholic clergy who supported Pope Benedict XV's calls for peace.  Perhaps most important historically, the War conditioned the British response to the Rising, transforming the perception of it from a primarily Irish affair into an attack on the UK as a whole in collusion with her continental enemies.  The result was a broad crackdown that further weakened the moderates and strengthened the republicans.

Overall, Townshend is remarkably successful in balancing the many revisionist views on the Rising and its key figures, and is commendably willing to admit that some facts are unknown and some will never be known.

The Green Road

The Green Road by Anne Enright   304 pages

Longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize

I wasn’t familiar with Anne Enright’s work before I was given The Green Road as a gift. The synopsis sounds wonderful:

From internationally acclaimed author Anne Enright comes a shattering novel set in a small town on Ireland's Atlantic coast. The Green Road is a tale of family and fracture, compassion and selfishness―a book about the gaps in the human heart and how we strive to fill them.

Spanning thirty years, The Green Road tells the story of Rosaleen, matriarch of the Madigans, a family on the cusp of either coming together or falling irreparably apart. As they grow up, Rosaleen's four children leave the west of Ireland for lives they could have never imagined in Dublin, New York, and Mali, West Africa. In her early old age their difficult, wonderful mother announces that she’s decided to sell the house and divide the proceeds. Her adult children come back for a last Christmas, with the feeling that their childhoods are being erased, their personal history bought and sold.

A profoundly moving work about a family's desperate attempt to recover the relationships they've lost and forge the ones they never had, The Green Road is Enright's most mature, accomplished, and unforgettable novel to date.

I even saved it until I had to spend some time in an airport. It starts out pretty good, but quickly goes downhill in my opinion. The beginning and the ending are the best parts.

The story starts in 1980 with Hanna, seemingly the youngest of the Madigan brood. Mom Rosaleen has taken to her bed after the oldest, Dan, announces he wants to become a priest. The story then shifts to focus on Dan. It is 1991. He is living in New York. Not sure what his occupation is as the story is more about his life as a gay man and the AIDS epidemic more than anything. The next section focuses on Constance, stilling living in Ireland, in 1997. She is at a hospital to determine if the lump in her breast is cancer. The next shift is on Emmet, who is, I think, a missionary in Mali in 2002. As I read these sections, I felt that Enright kept the reader at arm’s length. Then the story jumps back to the Madigan home for Christmas 2005.

The father, who we don’t see much of, died ten years (I think) earlier. Rosaleen is the same melodramatic matriarch that she was in Hanna’s section. There are no explanations of how the four ended up like they did, which made me feel disconnected to the character’s problems.

I give The Green Road 2 out of 5 stars.

A Few of the Girls

A Few of the Girls by Maeve Binchy.  319 pages.

This is a collection of stories by Maeve Binchy, an Irish author who has written many best-selling novels.  Generally, her books focus on people and their relationships with each other, and this collection, according to the publisher, " is a glorious collection of the very best of her writing, full of the warmth, charm, and humor that has always been essentially Maeve."

I have read, I think, all of Binchy's books, some of them several times over.  For the ones I like best, I like the characters, and reading my way through their relationships with each other.  I also enjoy how the stories aren't always full of happy endings; not every character is destined to wind up happy (at least by the end of the pages in the book).   These stories, published after Binchy died in 2012, are typical for her stories.   However, I didn't really enjoy them, overall.   I found too many of them were a bit melancholy, and even at times, bitter, for what I wanted to be reading.   In a book-length story, there is often more balance between the melancholy and the happy, but these stories were too short for that to happen.   The stories are realistic, which I liked, and were true in style to the author's books.   However, I guess I was looking for a bit more balance, and the stories felt like they were on the sadder side and after reading several of them, it got a bit depressing.

The Tower

The Tower by William Butler Yeats, 104 pages

The Tower is an arrangement by Yeats of previously published poems and snippets from his translation of Sophocles' play Oedipus at Colonus.  The two most famous poems, "Sailing to Byzantium" and "The Gift of Haroun al-Rashid", appear first and next-to-last, respectively, bookending the collection with themes of spiritual longing and mystery.  The title work finds the poet brooding over age and mortality, while the last features a necromantic invocation of the ghosts of Dublin, with the author finally taking his place among them, and them alongside him.

Catholics

Catholics by Brian Moore, 107 pages

In the near future, the Fourth Vatican Council has declared the Mass to be merely symbolic and abolished personal confession.  In this atmosphere, a monastery off the coast of Ireland where the Mass is still said in Latin and private confession still practiced - for pastoral reasons - becomes a center of pilgrimage and media attention.  To forestall an ecumenical disaster that threatens to derail talks with the Buddhists, the Vatican dispatches a liberal American priest to squelch dissent at the monastery.  Father Kinsella must confront a cadre of true believers among the monks, as well as deal with the abbot, a man tormented by his own doubts and torn between personal judgement and the authority to which he has sworn obedience.

Catholics is a novella loaded with thick, gooey ambiguity, which is entirely appropriate given its time and theme.  First published in 1972, a mere seven years after the end of the Second Vatican Council, the novel asks what many Catholics and non-Catholics are still asking - whether the painful changes called for by the Council marked the beginning of a renewal of the Church, or the beginning of an end in which the Gates of Hell prevail at last.

The Thing about December

The thing about December / Donal Ryan.207 Pages  Johnsey Cunliffe is mildly retarded and has gone through life largely protected by his parents.  When his father and then his mother die, he is trying to navigate his life without really understanding what is happening.  Ugly things happen to Johnsey, especially once the farm he inherited becomes valuable in a land struggle.  Johnsey is unable to determine who to trust and every time he puts his faith in someone, is betrayed.  
The author's voice for Johnsey is wonderful and it makes reading the book that much harder because of the things that are occurring. 

Annie Dunne

Annie Dunne by Sebastain Barry        256 pages

             Not too long ago I read (and wrote a review) for Sebastian Barry’s A Long, Long Way. It was an exquisite little novel, one of the most powerful stories I have ever read about World War I. Then I stumbled up another magnificent Barry novel, Annie Dunne.

            Annie’s story is a sequel, of sorts, to A Long, Long Way. I, however, did not make the connection to halfway through the story. So I won’t spoil it and tell you what the connection is, you’ll have to read it to discover it.

            It’s 1959 in Kelsha, County Wicklow, Ireland. Annie has been relocated to the country from Dublin, forced out of her home when her dead sister’s husband wanted to remarry. Now she lives with her cousin, Sarah, in a small cottage on Sarah’s small farm. The cottage is so small that the women must share a bed. Both are in their sixties, I’m thinking late sixties, and have never married. The work is back-breaking, but both are used to such labors. Annie considers Sarah long in the face, while Annie is also plain and afflicted with a humpback as a result of a childhood bout with polio.

            Annie has always been grateful for Sarah taking her in, and she’ll do anything not be on the verge of homelessness again. When Annie’s nephew, Trevor, asks them to watch his two children over the summer, Annie and Sarah agree. They aren’t used to the chaos a six-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy bring to their quiet lives, but both relish in playing mother.

            Troubles are brewing for Annie. First a there’s the scheming handyman, Billy Kerr, who starts sniffing around Sarah. Annie is terrified that Sarah will marry him, thus leaving her homeless once again.  Then Annie catches the children performing a bizarre, to Annie, sexual act. She doesn’t know what to do or say about this and worries about it constantly.

            I found it quite interesting that the scheming handyman Billy Kerr also has the same name as Sarah’s donkey. Also, neither of the children’s names are ever mentioned.  The simply referred as the boy and the girl.

            Barry has a gift for image and metaphor. The prose is compact and beautiful. I’ve been telling my reader friends that Annie Dunne is pure poetry. I give this book five out of five stars.

Eamon de Valera

Eamon de Valera by the Earl of Longford and Thomas P O'Neill, 474 pages

Eamon de Valera was born in New York City to a Spanish father and an Irish mother.  There's no telling what he would have become if he had remained in the US, but after the early death of his father he was sent to live with relatives in Ireland, where he became slowly involved with the dual causes of Irish culture and Irish independence.  If de Valera had one defining characteristic, it was that he pursued his logic inexorably to its conclusion, refusing to compromise his principles.  For better or worse, his personality dominated Irish politics from the failure of the Easter rising in 1916 until his death in 1975, from revolution through civil war and electoral politics to a role as revered elder statesman.  More than anyone else, he made Ireland a Republic.

This is an authorized biography, with all the advantages and disadvantages that entails.  Lord Longford had access to de Valera himself, as well as various members of his family, and the book is full of memories and anecdotes only they could have provided.  On the other hand, it lacks a certain amount of objectivity - doubtless other participants have different recollections of some of the events.  Longford is too honest a man not to ensure that all the historical data is verified, but the interpretations are certainly open to question.

Well-written and engaging, despite its length.

Bonus - Lord Longford was portrayed by Jim Broadbent in the excellent docudrama Longford.  Eamon de Valera was played by Alan Rickman in the not-quite-as-good Michael Collins.  Both Rickman and Broadbent spent time as Potions master at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

A Long, Long Way

A Long, Long Way by Sebastian Barry  304 pages

One of the most powerful novels I have ever read about World War I is Erich Maria Remarque's classic novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. Now I can add Sebastian Barry's 2005 novel, A Long, Long Way to that very short list.

The Irish author and playwright sends barely eighteen-year-old Willie Dunne to Flanders in this harrowing account of divided loyalties and the realities of war. Willie's story begins with one of the most beautiful first lines I have ever read: He was born in the dying days. The first chapter follows a simple, short recap of Willie's young life and stops when he sees in love at first with the beautiful young Gretta Lawlor.

Next, it's 1914, and Willie finds himself on the front lines, a Dubliner fighting with the Allied forces against Germany on the Western Front. Readers experience the horrors of life in the trenches and the devastating affects of the gas attacks. Willie has never encountered such violence and such a tragic waste of life. Letters from home and his buddies help keep his spirits bolstered, but as friend after friend becomes a statistic in the wounded and dead toll, Willie struggles to understand the new world around him.

When he does get a leave and goes home, Dublin is much different than when he left. While his sisters are overjoyed he's home, his father is deeply disappointed in some of Willie's views, and his sweetheart, Gretta, has bad news for him. He rushes back to the front, more comfortable with the war and the havoc it wracks than he is at home.

While A Long, Long Way is not a page-turner, it is compulsive reading. It was short listed for the 2005 Man Booker Prize. Nobel Prize-winning author J. M. Coetzee sums up Barry's work best, A deeply moving story of courage and fidelity" that should be mandatory reading in high school.