'there is a price for everything'

On Canaan's Side
by Sebastian Barry

Sebastian Barry has been something of a Booker bridesmaid, short-listed for both The Secret Scripture and A Long, Long Way but yet to scoop the prize itself. He's been at least long-listed again for this latest novel which follows the fortunes, and otherwise, of another of the Dunne family and only time will tell whether this is the one that brings the prize home (all this flirting with authors like Barry and Barnes leads you to think that it's only a matter of time). Barry remains the only author to have reduced me to tears, the final pages of A Long Long Way being read through eyes that refused to stop weeping despite my deep, manly breaths and furious wipes with the back of an increasingly wet hand. He is unafraid of wearing his heart on his sleeve, unashamedly sentimental, but always prepared to examine frankly a life filled with distress and pain as well as love and laughter (I'm in danger of sounding like the lyrics to Aussie soap Sons and Daughters there). That said, there was something about the plot twist at the end of The Secret Scripture that really rankled; it was too neat, too implausible and, it seemed to me, unnecessary, stopping a good book being great. Before beginning the new book I was already aware that there was something similar in it too, a fact that had me worried from the outset as well as of course wondering as I read if I could work out what it was. Not the best way to read a book for sure.

On Canaan's Side is narrated by Lily Bere, daughter of Thomas Dunne (from his play The Steward of Christendom), sister to Willie Dunne (from A Long Long Way) and Annie Dunne (from, erm . . . Annie Dunne). I'm being a bit flippant but actually the cumulative effect of Barry's focus on family groups means that, for those who have already some or all of his previous work, there is an immediate familiarity at the beginning of a new book. I already knew something of Lily's childhood so that even the innocent mention of her brother's name in the opening pages reminded me of everything that had caused those tears years ago. As she recounts the feeling that something of her brother had been lost in the trenches and battlefields of France and her memories of how he would appear suddenly in their house (none other than Dublin Castle) whilst on leave 'dressed in shadows, disguised by the thin dust of terror he carried on him', how could I not feel the prickle of those tears once again?

So, read as part of a body of work, there is something undeniably powerful from the outset but for anyone coming to this novel afresh, with no knowledge of Barry's other work there is still something immediately involving. The first chapter has been headed by Lily as 'First Day Without Bill', her first words 'Bill is gone.' And then the question, 'What is the sound of an eighty-nine-year old heart breaking?' Bill is her grandson, who returned from war in the Gulf only to take his own life, the pain of surviving a child doubled by another generation passed. Lily has decided to take her own life too but not before setting down her story, an extraordinary tale of flight, disappearance, love realised too late, and sorrow upon sorrow. As I mentioned we are thrown right into it emotionally, even her happiest memories are tinged with a certain pain or as she far more poetically puts it, 'I am dwelling on things I love, even if a measure of tragedy is stitched into everything, if you follow the thread long enough.'

Yet I will confess there is a certain pleasure in this. I scratch away at the Formica table, coming down the pages of this account book with my pencil. I seem to see everyone and everything I write. I am able in some strange way to greet my father again. I would like say to him, Papa, I do not know where you are buried, I am sorry.

The Dunne family experience is that of those who remained loyal to the Crown at exactly the wrong moment in Ireland's history; fighting with the King's troops to earn a victory in Europe that would not be celebrated back at home. For Lily, allied with her sweetheart Tadg Bere, who joined the Black and Tans after his time at the front line, the shifting politics of Ireland finds them both with a contract out on them and fleeing for the refuge 'on Canaan's side.' It is a measure of the sorrow to come that Lilly looking back at that moment can think that, 'Perhaps in that moment, as Ireland stirred like a great creature in the sea, and altered her position, we should all have been taken out and shot, as a sort of kindness, a neatness.' Their first experience of America is of course New York and for this young Irish girl a shock to the senses.

How were the ladders long enough to get bricks up so high? And every road in spate, with a flood of angry cabs, people shouting and calling, plunging along, horns raking through the noise; it was already a kind of assault, a terror you had to learn.

The threat that hangs over them both soon catches up with Tadg in an art gallery in Chicago where he is gunned down and Lily flees to find refuge first in Cleveland. Beginning again from scratch Lily finds a life in service but suffers loss after loss in a period of American history punctuated by conflicts that extort a terrible price from her. As she says much later, 'There is a price for everything, even in a story. How much truer that is in real life.' Lily, it is fair to say, suffers terribly. Her love for Tadg realised only just before he is taken away, love and companionship found once again with policeman Joe only for him to disappear with his secrets just as she becomes pregnant, the combination of hardship and joy in raising her son Ed laid to waste by the effects of his tour in Vietnam, an experience that leaves him 'Like an empty house with a ghost in it,' and finally the same process again with her grandson. Bereavement, disappearance, love and loss; this is a novel that piles on the pain as Lily remembers.

To remember sometimes is a great sorrow, but when the remembering has been done, there comes afterwards a very curious peacefulness. Because you have planted your flag on the summit of sorrow. You have climbed it.

If this is a novel of memory and remembrance ('How strange, how strange. We may be immune to typhoid, tetanus, chicken-pox, diphtheria, but never memory. There is no inoculation against that.') then it is also specifically a novel about not forgetting. Lily remains troubled and pursued by Tadg's killer, 'the man in the shadows', not literally to her knowledge, but the spectre of that still current death sentence leads her to wonder whether 'that man always with me? Was he a sort of secret husband, always creeping along near me, or finding out bits of news about me, and coming to find his prey?' Memory it seems has many ways in which it can attack.

The lyricism and poetry of Barry's writing makes it a pleasure to read as always. There is joy as well as sadness, even moments of humour too, but it is the humility, stoicism and kindness of Lily that warms the heart. And what of those worries about implausible plot points? Well, as he points out in this interview much of his plot is based on real events (and Barry it seems does literally wear his heart on his sleeve, tearful emotion is always at the surface) but there are still a couple of things that made me wince slightly. I thought I had worked out the troublesome moment only to find that there was another before the novel's end. I won't divulge either except to say that the first is a secret that I found hard to believe when I read it in another novel and again here, the second is another example of Barry's recent need to neaten his endings by tying it all up. He's a playwright too after all, structure is everything, so I know where the impulse comes from, I just wish he wouldn't! That's just me though. You will have to decide for yourself how much you can credit or how comfortable you are with such an open heart. Imagine if a stranger where to begin relaying their life story to you, a story that brought tears to their eyes. It would feel uncomfortable I'm sure, but what an extraordinarily brave and generous thing to do.

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Books of the decade

Everyone else seems to be doing it, from newspapers to bloggers, so why shouldn't I? Well, because I have a terrible memory for one thing! What was my favourite book of 2001? I don't know, that was years ago now, I've got married and had two kids since then, I'm lucky I can remember everyone's birthdays and our anniversary. This of course is what the Internet is made for, so with the help of that search box and various references I have assembled my picks of the last decade. I decided to restrict myself to picking a single book for each year, and had to have been published that year, which immediately became problematic as 2000 saw the publication of several standout novels for me and I found it very hard to pick one amongst them. This problem repeated itself a couple of times and I also experienced the opposite effect when I struggled to pick anything as truly brilliant in 2003 (please feel free to point out your own) A special mention therefore goes to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay(2000) by Michael Chabon which is one of the reasons why I began this blog in the first place. A favourite book, I gave it to my wife to read and asked her one evening how it was going, where she'd got to. 'He's just walking across the Arctic with his dog.' My inability to recall something even as obvious as that told me that I may have been reading plenty of books at the time, and enjoying them, but I certainly wasn't retaining enough of what I read. By committing myself to writing a review afterwards, and therefore having to make the odd note along the way, I felt I could train myself to be a better reader. I hope it's working. I don't claim to be in any kind of position to pronounce what books were the 'best', but what follows might be more accurately described as a list of the ones that stood out for me then and still do now: The books that say something about my journey through fiction and my maturation as a reader.

2000 - House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski

The only book I can think of that has actually terrified me whilst reading it, Danielewski's extraordinary début is notable for several reasons. First as an object: the beautiful patterned boards and excellent quality of the US edition make it a joy to hold and read and the various versions of the first edition as listed on the copyright page mean that colour makes its way into the text of a book which is as inventive typographically as it is stylistically. We begin by reading the account of Johnny Truant who moves into the apartment of the recently deceased Zampano and discovers a manuscript written by him about a film called The Navisdson Record. Will Navidson, a photojournalist, had discovered, whilst making a simple survey of his house, that the inside measurements seem to be just slightly larger than the outside. This leads to a journey as epic and terrifying as you can imagine happening within four walls and the book is made up of description of the film footage, interviews, interjections, footnotes, letters, the text changing font and construction so that the reader is left disorientated and hopefully scared shitless. I've read a couple of books since which have attempted to do something similar but neither of them came close to this, a true original.

2001 - Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth by Chris Ware

I recently re-read this graphic novel to see if it was still as good as I though it was in memory. It was, and then some. You can read that review here but the reason why this book is on the list is because it showed me what graphic fiction could be capable of. Taking his inspiration from his own life and his own non-existent relationship with his father Ware's book is a beautiful, decorative, inventive and moving account of the struggles of one family to relate to each other through the generations. The artwork is visually satisfying with many hidden wonders along the way and it is one of the few books that has a dust jacket which can hold your attention for a good period of time before you get on with the book itself. A gem.

2002 - If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor

I read this book in something close to a single sitting, becoming completely hypnotised by the rhythm of McGregor's writing and utterly mesmerized by its distinctive style style. Several hours later, as I tearily closed the final pages, I knew this was a book that I wanted other people to read so that we could enthuse about it together. I was a little disappointed when some that I had gifted a copy weren't quite as a sold on it as me, put off by the 'tricksiness' of the writing, but it hasn't dimmed my own enthusiasm. It is true that McGregor's debut has a distinctive style, characters are never referred to by name, only as 'the man with burned hands', or 'the boy with the pierced eyebrow' but after a while it seems no stranger than them being called Bob or Kevin and there often feels as though there is something totemic about their distinctions. The action of a single day assumes huge significance for these characters who all have a past, whose present moment is our focus for the duration of the book and whose future I still wonder about.

2003 - Things You Should Know by A.M. Homes

So the bogey year I mentioned and I know that there were plenty of fine books published this year (Richard Power's The Time Of Our Singing and John Gray's Straw Dogs for example) but with books like Curious Incident... and Vernon God Little making the headlines were there any that really compared to some of the others on this list. One book that really made an impact on me and sent me trawling after her entire back catalogue was this collection of stories from A M Homes. Up until reading this collection I had never really got on with shorter fiction, I didn't really get it, but something about Homes' humour, darkness and inventiveness chimed nicely and it has since opened up a little door in my mind that begins to appreciate the possibilities of the short story. From the twisted logic of the woman who waits among the sand dunes to collect the discarded condoms from the local lifeguards' sexual conquests in order to impregnate herself to the touching portrait of Nancy Reagan coping with her husband's deteriorating mental state this is a collection as odd as the composite creature on its front cover. That examination of her previous books showed more dark delights the most controversial of which was The End Of Alice, in which a young woman who plans to seduce a 12 year old boy conducts a correspondence with a jailed paedophile and murderer. If you want a challenging read then this might be the book for you.

2004 - I’ll Go To Bed At Noon by Gerard Woodward

This is easily the best of Woodward's trilogy of books featuring the Jones family in the part of north London I lived in for over a decade. There is something very personal and direct about reading a book which features locations that you know like the back of your own hand and to meet characters so skilfully created by their author that they seem as real as the people you see yourself in the street makes the achievement of this book even more astonishing. This book stands on its own but is obviously enhanced by the two that stand either side of it, the time spent with the Joneses through their tumultuous family history was both funny, sad, painful and heart-warming in a way that only a brilliantly observed and detailed novel could be. Never have I wanted to spend so much time with such a dysfunctional family.

2005 - A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry

As I have mentioned here before I wept like a child when I reached the final pages of this stunning novel. My review of it is here but in short this is a book that could have (should have?) won the Booker that year, a book which follows a young Irishman as he makes his way to the battlefields of Europe, to make something of himself whilst back at home the nation he is supposedly fighting for is tearing itself apart. Barry's prose is never less than easy to enjoy, often achieving a lyricism and beauty that is in contrast to the devastation and horror of what is being described. Having now read some more of his novels, which use the same strands of characters, I feel that I know even more about the few families he has chosen to focus on and as a a result, a much clearer view of the wider picture. His mastery of plotting and structure mean that an emotional punch to the gut is always delivered with the force that is hard to counter. If you don't weep at the end of this too then, well, I'm sorry.

2006 - The Road by Cormac McCarthy

A friend of mine bought this recently as their third pick in a 3 for 2 on the advice of someone else. Knowing that I was a reader they asked me whether it was any good. Without thinking about what I was saying I assured him that it was quite simply one of the best books ever written, and once I had given voice to that sentence I realised that that was exactly what I thought (my original review is here). My original review is here and its title is one of the reasons why this book is so powerful. Living in a modern world we seldom have to deal with any of the machinations that make our lives so comfortable. Take away society, civilisation and progress, throw mankind back into a situation where it's survival of the fittest and you engage with what it really means to be human. Our current grapple with the topic of climate change only makes the book more relevant today but its universal themes mean that the nature of the apocalypse isn't important. I read this book in a single sitting, it's very hard not to, so compelling and primal is it, and I am convinced that it will still be being read by our descendants hundreds of years into the future. If we make it that far.

2007 - Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

The Great American Novel is a phrase, an idea, an emblem, that is so overused as to be virtually worthless. So many different types of book have been given the appellation, often all encompassing tomes that supposedly encapsulate the 'American' experience neatly and totally. It seems to me that the great American novel should really be a messy and catastrophic affair in order to truthfully reflect that experience and Denis Johnson's magnum opus deals with the Vietnam War in a way that seems entirely appropriate for a conflict so damaging to those American ideals, a conflict which they have arguably never recovered from. My father, a fellow Jonhnson fan, which in this country particularly, makes us part of a very small club, created an extraordinary 'map' to aid his reading of this vast novel, to help him keep track of characters and themes (as mentioned in the blogosphere). That's how bonkers this book is. It isn't easy, it isn't neat, but it is extraordinary. My original review is here.


2008 - Our Story Begins - Tobias Wolff

This was a bit of a toughy as I had picked Darkmans by Nicola Barker before I realised that it had actually been published the year before. Picking from the other books eligible was no mean feat. My reason for picking Wolff's collected stories is because having been tempted by the short form by AM Homes I then read stories by some of its masters: Chekhov, Cheever, Carver and more. Wolff is another of those and this book shows how it can really be done. Twenty one previously published stories are joined by ten new pieces, all of which show his amazing way with dialogue, the straight course he steers through his work by incorporating morality and his surprising inventiveness. What's particularly impressive is the variety. He doesn't have a fixed technique or style, he doesn't focus on a particular type of person or environment and he never, ever makes you feel like he's playing a trick or being quirky. Original review here.

2009 - Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips

Picking a book of the decade from this year is tough simply because of the inability to use hindsight, it seems too soon to take one of my recent reads and slap a rosette on its cover. Perhaps it is because of this that the book that still sticks in my mind is one that I read much earlier in the year, or perhaps it is in spite of the passage of that time that I can't get it out of my head. With a nod to Faulkner Phillips' multi-stranded novel follows a US soldier in Korea in 1950, holed up in a tunnel after coming under friendly fire (this real incident has been well researched and, even better, well presented - the research worn lightly). Then in 1959 back in the US we meet the eponymous half-siblings, Termite a mute, his sections allowing Phillips to flex her stylistic muscles. She goes beyond that though, audaciously connecting the various threads of her story so that they transcend time or location coming together in writing that reaches something close to rapture. Original review here.

I can't just leave it there because one of my favourite books ever isn't on the list. This is because Cormac McCarthy had the nerve to write a genuine masterpiece in the same year that his namesake Tom McCarthy wrote the quite brilliant Remainder. A book so concerned with the notion of authenticity is tailor made for a professional faker like me but it is a book which should appeal to a broad readership for all sorts of reasons. Clever without being a smart-arsey, arty without being wanky, it is the kind of book that makes your head feel like someone's got in there and done some spring-cleaning. The prose manages to be clinical and sensual at the same time, each of the five senses becomes hugely important as the hero attempts to piece together what he can remember of his life before 'the accident'. It has the pace of a thriller, the intelligence of something altogether more philosophical and an artistic sentiment that made me feel as if the book in my hand was the coolest thing in the world. When was the last time a book felt cool? Despite it not being on the list above, if I had to pick a book which not only made an impact on me but in some way defined the past decade, this would be the one. Let one McCarthy take that honour and the other something a little grander.

And now, over to you...

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'out in the unknowable sea'

The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty
by Sebastian Barry


Towards the end of Barry's 'flawed' but prize-winning novel The Secret Scripture there is a brief encounter for Roseanne McNulty with her brother-in-law Eneas. Until they meet both have been nothing but stories to each other, both of them estranged and exiled, and there is a tender comfort that they offer each other in this passage which is startling for its brevity. Eneas delivers a speech about a bombing raid on Belfast, an event which has left him 'veritably singed' in appearance, and he mentions a bible passage which forms the epigraph of the novel which carries his name.

'And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire'
Revelation, ch. 20: v. 15

From the very first sentence Barry casts Eneas as but a small part of a country's history, a history he has been covering form differing perspectives through all of his writing.

In the middle of the lonesome town, at the back of John Street, in the third house from the end, there is a little room. For this small bracket in the long paragraph of the street's history, it belongs to Eneas McNulty. All about him the century has just begun, a century which he will endure, but none of which will belong to him.

Eneas is the first born son of Tom McNulty,a simple boy who finds his world turned on its head when his siblings arrive, all of them cleverer than him. His childhood seems brief, with small flashes of joy before he signs up to join the merchant navy with other men from Sligo in order to help the war effort. This first venture will have huge consequences for his life as he discovers on his return.

He can't find a niche in the world of Sligo to slot himself back into - not just a niche for living in, but a niche of time itself. The sea has put a different clock into him.

This sense of unease is compounded when he is blanked by his boyhood friend Jonno Lynch. The change in the political climate whilst he has been away means his work for the British navy has placed him firmly on the other side to his former companion. This divide opens even further when, after a year with no work, he joins the other 'fools and flotsam' in the Royal Irish Constabulary. As the violence and killings increase between the rebels and the 'tans' Eneas is offered a single opportunity to redeem himself in Lynch's and the rebel's eyes. When he cannot do what they ask of him it is only a matter of time before he has to flee, leaving behind his new found love, beginning a life in exile, 'cast out from his world'.

There are plenty of writers who plough the same furrow intellectually with their various plots and characters, who end up writing essentially the same thing again and again however different the set-up may be. Barry does the opposite with his novels. The period covered is roughly the same and the same cast list of characters inhabits each book, but each time he is able to focus on a specific facet left exposed by this turbulent period of history, and each time it feels as though he is voicing for the first time the forgotten history of a real man or woman, a person who could stand for any number of the Irish people but who always stands out as an individual because of his skill in creating character.

The odyssey that Eneas endures seems almost like an adventure until those moments when he takes stock and you realise that a man in exile can never have those comforts of rest, home and family that the rest of us take for granted. The landings at Normandy are depicted in all the raw numbness made so clear by Capa or Spielberg and when he is effectively taken hostage by a French farmer after the war and forced to work his land he realises his state.

Firstly he stood amid the dead by the edge of the sea and secondly now he works the rows of vines not so much as a living man but a vanished man. Of course he understands this is his natural condition.

He makes attempts at return, confronting the true meaning of nostalgia, 'he remembers Mr Jackson the master explaining in his batlike voice years ago that nostalgia means something hard and tricky in the Greek, not a pleasing feeling at all, but the sickness of returning home.', and each time the visits are brief as it isn't long before the sentence of death passed on him all those years ago rears its head again and makes plain that there are long memories and no forgiveness.

In Eneas' telling of his meeting with Roseanne there are of course differences which sent me back to the later book to check. The reliability of memory is questioned as it should be, not just in people who are clearly damaged by their experiences (As Eneas notes, 'Looks like he has a choice of memories for the same times here and there. Not so good.'), but surely by all of us. However, as unreliable as it may be it is often clear that in the 20th century in Ireland memory is one thing that people hold dear, as important above all.

This book fails to quite reach the character defining heights of The Secret Scripture, or the emotional power of A Long Long Way and yet the standard of writing is so high throughout, the empathy with which he writes so warm and full of love that you cannot help but be affected by the overwhelming sadness that these books are soaked in. By finding these voices and articulating so much through them Barry is slowly creating a body of work which will stand alongside, or rather very much as a part of the real oral history of Ireland.

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my heart lies there

A Long, Long Way
by Sebastian Barry

After reading and enjoying The Secret Scripture courtesy of dovegreyreader it seemed only prudent to take heed of her claim that his previous novel was for her 'the best book that never won the Booker'. Quite a statement, on a topic which has even spawned its own competition in the blogosphere (in which Barry failed to make the cut). We won't get into a debate now about which books should have won when, but I think it's fair to say that in 2005, in a very strong field, John Banville's 'The Sea' was a surprise winner. Not having read it myself I can't really comment, but I loved a couple of the others and A Long Long Way absolutely floored me. I'm not a man given to tears and maybe I was just a bit tired but as I read the final few pages of this book I wept like a great big girly.

Before writing this post I had the good fortune to read an essay by Keith Jeffery in the Times Literary Supplement, in which he wrote about the Irish perspective on The Great War, in particular how this was expressed through theatre. Sean O'Casey's 'The Silver Tassie' (which was later adapted into an opera) and Frank McGuiness's much later play 'Observe The Sons Of Ulster Marching Towards The Somme' are two famous examples. Many men from Ireland fought for the Allied forces on the understanding that there would be Home Rule once victory had been won in Europe (many men from Ulster joined up for the very opposite reason of course but as Barry says in this book 'It was a deep, dark maze of intentions, anyhow'). But the shifting of Irish politics continued whilst those men were away, culminating in the Easter Rising of 1916 and life for Irish soldiers in the British Army became increasingly tough, seen as unreliable at best by those they served with and treacherous if not treasonable by those at home. There has been a popular conception that the fallout from the war, when it did eventually end, resulted in a form of national amnesia, with many people choosing to forget that those they knew might have fought for the British whilst Republicans were being killed at home, something that Jeffery refutes with his very interesting essay.

Barry's novel picks up on many of these themes. His hero is Willie Dunne, son of a policeman, whose 'damnable height' never reaches the six foot mark that would allow him to follow in his father's footsteps. Instead he sees his opportunity to make his father proud and impress Gretta Lawlor, the girl he yearns for, by signing up with Royal Dublin Fusiliers and going away to war. Dunne (sister to Annie Dunne the subject of Barry's 2002 novel of the same name) is a perfect narrator for this story, young and relatively innocent, his confusion is our confusion, and this conflict is one in which naivety is everywhere. As a reader I found myself wincing just with the concept of signing up 'for the duration', knowing that the war would last so long. Barry handles his first set piece brilliantly, the spectre of a yellow cloud moving toward the trenches and the bedlam unleashed as the poisoned gas takes its deadly toll is genuinely terrifying. As much for us, who know what is coming towards them, as for them who have no idea. Knowledge is no protector as he shows with the second gas attack. Armed with masks this time there is the even more terrifying prospect of remaining in place and allowing the gas to pass over, the efficacy of military hardware as much a problem then as it is now. It is something which Dunne himself never really recovers from, his sorrow at losing Captain Pasley, who remains behind in the trenches even though it means death, changes:

'...something had happened to that sorrow. It had gone rancid in him, he thought; it had boiled down to something he didn't understand. The pith of sorrow was in the upshot a little seed of death.'

Almost worse than what he suffers on the front are the trips he makes back home. The first of these places him right amongst the Easter Rising as it happens and he is traumatised again by witnessing the death of a rebel at close hand. Our young hero begins to feel the stirrings of his self, begins to form opinions, starts to do what he had been exhorted to do by Gretta's father: to 'know his own mind'. And this places him in conflict with his father. This is one of the great themes of the book and the letters that pass between Willie and his father have a great significance, as letters must have done, and still do, in war time. But with the un-mooring of that security he felt at home he finds life on the front harder and harder to deal with.

The conflict between the various factions of Irish politics are seen in microcosm in the army and given a grand event in the boxing match which pits Ulsterman against Southerner, two giants of men who trade blows whilst the assembled men shout from around the hall. The epic fight almost silences the crowd and when one man finally fells the other, in spite of the bragging rights which inevitably go to the victor's side there is a new found respect between the two groups of men. Barry certainly has great skills in creating memorable characters: Christy Moran, the Sergeant-Major with a filthy mouth provides most of the one-liners, his clowning keeping morale high. Father Buckley provides spiritual support as well as an ear to confide fears and doubts. A fellow soldier, Jesse Kirwan, who Willie encounters first in Dublin during the rebel uprising, becomes the focal point of Willie's political maturation.

As the title suggests, music plays an enormously important role, in particular the singing amongst the men and this is his other great achievement in the book. Barry allows the prose to become infused in musical language so that in the theatre of war 'grief was as common as whistle tunes', and it is only the men there fighting (rather than the officers safely away from the battle) that know 'the drear paintings and the atrocious music of the front line'. Amongst the men, music becomes the great leveller, as when their Captain requests that they sing 'Do Your Balls Hang Low'. Willie himself is blessed with a great voice and in a beautifully rendered scene he sings Ave Maria 'for these ruined men, these doomed listeners, these wretched fools of men come out to fight a war without a country to their name'. It is hard to steer a course that avoids sentimentality when dealing with these scenes and it is to Barry's credit that he avoids not just that but also what Jeffery calls 'the flawed understanding of the war, including constant casualties, incessant misery, homoerotic trench relationships and the rest.'

As someone who has read very little literature of The Great War I feel that I have learnt not just something of the grim realities of warfare but, through the sympathetic creation of a character like Willie Dunne, something of that notion of sacrifice which has played such a huge part in its depiction in our culture.

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the secret history

The Secret Scripture
by Sebastian Barry

First of all, huge thanks to Dovegreyreader who helped me towards this copy through her post-Bookerthon competition. I had been wanting to read it for a while as it had been tipped to win the Booker as early as June this year by none other than Jonathan Coe. My only worry was that both DGR and John Self had mentioned their worries about the ending. It is a strange experience to read a book, to be enjoying it, but approaching the end with a sense of dread. But we'll get there later.

I am aware of Sebastian Barry more as a playwright than novelist so it comes as no surprise that the main strength of this book is in its narrative voice. This for most part is Roseanne McNulty, a patient in Roscommon Mental Hospital since 1957.

'I am completely alone, there is no one in the world that knows me now outside of this place, all my own people, the few farthings of them that once were, my little wren of a mother I suppose in chief, they are all gone now. And my persecutors are gone in the main I believe, and the reason for all this is that I am an old, old woman now, I may be as much as a hundred, though I do not know, and no one knows. I am only a thing left over, a remnant woman, and I do not even look like a human being no more, but a scraggy stretch of skin and bone in a bleak skirt and blouse, and a canvas jacket, and I sit here in my niche like a songless robin - no, like a mouse that died under the hearthstone where it was warm, and lies now like a mummy in the pyramids.'

Can't you just see her? That description comes on only the second page, in Roseanne's 'testimony' of herself, which she secretes under a loose floorboard in her room and which we will read with a growing sense of wonder. It is beautifully written, perhaps too beautifully in places -Barry's skill showing through too plainly given whose writing we are supposed to be reading- the extract above is a good example of how it can flirt with cliché before finding the right phrase. Roseanne is a character beautifully delineated, a woman who will elicit our sympathy with her tragic story (which we know from the beginning will not be easy - remember those persecutors from the passage above). But along the way we will have to question how reliable this narrative is. Not simply because she is a patient in a mental hospital but because, 'history, as far as I can see is not the arrangement of what happens, in sequence and in truth, but a fabulous arrangement of surmises and guesses held up as a banner against the assault of withering truth.'

Roseanne's story also becomes in the wider context an alternative history of Ireland itself. For those with a firm grasp on the tumultuous period before and after the Second World War it will probably be very clear. But if, like me, you aren't so clear then it is sometimes difficult to know whether the 'haze of memory' is obscuring the facts. What is certain is that with power shifting between groups and factions at the drop of the hat, there are many who will be caught in the crossfire and it is easy to see how, not only lives, but histories could be vanished.

We also have the thoughts of her psychiatrist, Dr Grene, contained within his commonplace book. Charged with preparing his patients for relocation or release as the hospital closes he is keen to know more of Roseanne, a patient who has been in the hospital so long that no one is clear as to the reason for her admission.

'I am afraid she is rather a touchstone for me. She has been a fixture, and not only represents the institution, but also, in a curious way, my own history, my own life. 'The star to every wandering bark,' as Shakespeare has it. '

As he follows a bureaucratic trail we continue with the increasingly tragic testimony of his patient and each will find themselves needing the other, the doctor as reliant upon the patient for support as he confronts his own past, present and future. Dr Grene is a less convincing character somehow, his story taking up less of the book proportionally and in our imaginations too, I think. The reasons for the breakdown of his mariage never really touched on beyond what we might infer from a doctor so caught up in his patients lives.

And then there's the ending. Knowing that it was an issue for some I had a guess about halfway through, imagining the most sensational, melodramatic and yet trite way of finishing the story and it turned out to be just that. I groaned audibly when it happened. It's all the more baffling for being the way Barry chooses to finish a novel all about the unreliability of memory. I would have been quite happy to have the details left unanswered, especially after having so enjoyed his depiction of remembrance, his questioning even of our experience of life.

'I am old enough to know now that time passing is just a trick, a convenience. Everything is always there, still unfolding, still happening. The past, the present, and the future, in the noggin eternally, like brushes, combs and ribbons in a handbag.'

The writing is consistently strong, it's a wonderful book, but I wish I could just forget the last 20 pages or so. I guess I will, in time.

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