One of the most vivid and realised characters of recent fiction, Willie Dunne is the innocent hero of Sebastian Barry's highly acclaimed novel. Leaving Dublin to fight for the... more
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Advantages: Poetic, affecting Disadvantages: Spoiled by over-use of foul language
A "song of innocence and experience, composed with poetic grace and an eye, both unflinching and tender, for savage detail and moments of pure beauty" is how Colm Toibin describes A Long Long Way. If you can imagine the depth behind those words, stop reading me and go read Sebastian Barry. Not a nuance of that description can be bettered nor contradicted. 'Still and all' as Barry would say…there is something about this book that does not quite work.
... ...before us. Born into a generation - a generation of Dubliners - who would die for their country in more ways than one. His father is a policeman. His mother died birthing his youngest sister. In many ways the tale is just another re-working of the horrors of the trenches of the Great War: Flanders, Ypres, the Somme and other battles which may be famous to those that know such things, or may be completely fictitious for what difference it makes. The ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: Beautifully written, imaginative angle, great plot twists Disadvantages: WW1 is becoming a crowded genre
...get me wrong, I'm not a Sun reader who only reads trashy novels on holiday - I actually have quite a wide taste in books, and in particular mid to late 20th century stuff. But I have always poohpoohed (is that a word it looks so odd written down) the Booker prize short list as being pompous self congratulatory stuff where you wouldnt find a plot if you held out a tasty morsel for it and called for it to come.
So I have taken up the challenge!! Over ... ...won already - Im just a slow reader) and submit my reviews on each book. Oh and to add to the excitement, I shall surreptitiously hide the title of a previous booker prize winner somewher in the review - can you spot it?? And I will write my reviews as an ordinary reader - not a literary genius, so I hope that will suit.:-)
Anyway - the first book I read was this, A Long Long Way, by Sebastian Barry.
It's not a long book - less than 300 pages - ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
One of the most vivid and realised characters of recent fiction, Willie Dunne is the innocent hero of Sebastian Barry's highly acclaimed novel. Leaving Dublin to fight for the Allied cause as a member of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, he finds himself caught between the war playing out on foreign fields and that festering at home, waiting to erupt with the Easter Rising. Profoundly moving, intimate and epic, "A Long Long Way" charts and evokes a terrible coming of age, one too often written out of history.
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