Just finished the book. I believe that I have found a modern classic.
Wow.
It's a story that will stay with me for a long time.
There are so many parts of the story that can't be touched--altogether poetic and inspiring.
There was only
one part that I could have done without (i.e. taking a dump scene)... yet even in the context of the story it does work, I just felt like the imagery was a bit too vivid for my taste.
At some level, the entire time I was reading the novel, I knew that it couldn't end with hope. So, I think that perhaps one of the geniuses of the story is that Barry gives the reader until the final chapter the thin string of hope or perhaps a hopefulness for a larger purpose in all of the story's madness--even when you know logically that this cannot be the case. There will be no Hollywood ending, no silver lining, no brown paper packages tied up with string. In the end, the reality is that the war only takes. It doesn't give anything, not mercy, not manliness, certainly not hope. It is unforgiving to the bitter end. It couldn't have been any other way.
Maybe I was hoping for a life lesson--one all encompassing one since there appears to be a few smaller ones placed throughout the book? This is an author with answers who uses his main character to artfully dig deeply into the questions, answers, and everything in between on such topics as family, love, courage, fidelity, patriotism, and war. And, yet, for some reason, the end was a bit too abrupt for me. Can't say anymore without ruining it. Well, ack. no I really can't say anything else.. nuts!
Anyhow, out of context these excerpts might not have the same impact...but here are some of my favorite lines from the book..as always, it's not just what you say but how you say it, and Sebastian Barry says it perfectly.
From A Long Long Way:
"It was like waiting for the end of the world but at the same time planning for next years harvest. They were doomed, but not just today." p.282
"The weather was evil beyond the window, a harsh sleet pinning the darkness with a million pins. He loved her so much he wept. That was how it was for Willie Dunne, and maybe they were matters that could only be taken away from him." p.12
"No man in truth regretted being raised above his fellows, that was a human fact, Willie supposed. But the raised-up ones needed to be of the ilk of Captain Pasley for it to make sense." p. 32
"They looked like the men at the back of any Irish country church on a Sunday, kneeling on one knee in manly fashion, the women of the parishes ranged on the seat proper. But they were not talking of beasts and ewes now, it was not their God they were waiting for, but the long shadows of the friends of Death himself. There was no star of Bethlehem here, nor wise men nor kings, only poor Tommies of Irishmen, Joe Soaps of back streets and small lives. Heroic things had been suggested to them, and though they were not heroes as you might read about in old Greek stories, their hearts, such as they were, answered. No man could come out to the war without some thought of proper duty, some inkling of possible deeds to match the tales they heard as children. There were no fathers or mothers here now, no raggedy dresses, no ringing games, spires or familiar churches, no ancient stones set upon the other, no St. Patrick's Cathedral and no Christ Church. Only a furrow of excellent agricultural clay where they in their complete insignificance crouched. This was not a scene of bravery, but it seemed to Willie in his fear and horror that there was a truth in it nonetheless. It was the thing before a joke was fashioned about it, before an anecdote was conjured up to make it safe, before a proper story in the newspaper, before some fellow with the wits would make a history of it. In the bleakness of its birth there was an unsullied truth, this tiny event that might make a corpse of him and all his proper dreams." p. 111
read it.
