false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171310643m/96200.jpg 96200 11 You may have read the hype. Irishman Jamie O'Neill was working as a London hospital porter when his 10-year labor of love, the 200,000-word manuscript of <I>At Swim, Two Boys</I>, written on a laptop during quiet patches at work, was suddenly snapped up for a hefty six-figure advance. For once, the book fully deserves the hype.<p> In the spring of 1915, Jim Mack and "the Doyler," two Dublin boys, make a pact to swim to an island in Dublin Bay the following Easter. By the time they do, Dublin has been consumed by the Easter Uprising, and the boys' friendship has blossomed into love--a love that will in time be overtaken by tragedy. O'Neill's prose, playing merrily with vocabulary, syntax, and idiom, has unsurprisingly drawn comparisons to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, but in his creation of comic characters (such as Jim's pathetic but irrepressible father) and in the sheer scale of his work, Charles Dickens springs to mind first. But Dickens never wrote a love story between young men as achingly beautiful as this. <p> In the character of Anthony MacMurrough, who is haunted by voices as he pursues his illegal and dangerous desire for Dublin boys, O'Neill has created a complex and fascinating center to his novel, rescuing the love story from mawkishness, and allowing a serious meditation on history, politics, and desire. For as Ireland seeks its own future free of British government, so Jim, Doyle, and MacMurrough look back to Sparta to find a way to live. As Dr Scrotes, one of MacMurrough's voices, commands: <blockquote>Help these boys build a nation of their own. Ransack the histories for clues to their past. Plunder the literature for words they can speak.</blockquote> In this massive, enthralling, and brilliant debut, Jamie O'Neill has indeed done just that: provided a nation for what Walt Whitman calls, in O'Neill's epigraph, "the love of comrades." <I>--Alan Stewart, Amazon.co.uk</I> 956105 2000 At Swim, Two Boys: A Novel total:520|5:266|4:138|3:73|2:32|1:11| 520 2176 1036 85 4 3 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Oct 08 18:55:33 -0700 2007 Thu Jan 15 04:53:42 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 4 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Sep 30 07:26:46 -0700 2007 Tue Oct 23 04:01:01 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 5 false false Thu Aug 30 20:55:38 -0700 2007 Thu Aug 30 20:59:47 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 2 false false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 01 12:51:05 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 06 22:15:58 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 2 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Nov 29 07:05:46 -0800 2007 Thu Nov 29 07:25:04 -0800 2007 I was amazed of how much of the story did not make an impression then, but seemed to powerful now.
It's a story of young budding love in beautiful Ireland, but all against a ...more...]]> 0 1 false false Sun Jun 07 16:21:14 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 01 09:48:59 -0800 2009 Sun Jun 07 16:21:14 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 1 true false Tue Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 02 10:02:16 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 02 10:11:13 -0700 2008
Biggest factor in my giving this a three- ...more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2002 Thu Jul 12 18:47:36 -0700 2007 Thu Jul 12 18:58:02 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Oct 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 28 13:31:46 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 28 13:41:29 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun Aug 02 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 04 12:33:10 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 04 12:42:02 -0700 2009 1 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Wed Apr 15 15:48:01 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 15 15:48:01 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Tue Sep 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Sep 19 09:08:45 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 23 08:36:51 -0700 2009 ...more...]]> 5 1 false false Wed Jan 09 07:43:19 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 09 07:46:16 -0800 2008 3 1 false false Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Sat Nov 10 14:00:29 -0800 2007 Sat Nov 10 14:00:29 -0800 2007
Was v. relieved to have read this when I found myself in relationship with N. Irish, as this book was my first and, until recently, only source of knowledge regarding the Easter Uprising.]]> 4 0 false false Mon Aug 31 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 31 18:58:15 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 31 18:58:15 -0700 2009
The one-star-rating is no...more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 09 20:51:45 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 03 13:52:37 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Apr 03 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 06 21:47:59 -0700 2009 Mon May 18 01:41:24 -0700 2009 To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
-- WB Yeats, “Easter 1916”

At Swim, Two Boys has a distinguished lineage. Many Irish writers have dealt with the theme of Irish independence...more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Sep 10 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Jul 25 07:51:28 -0700 2008 Wed Oct 08 07:53:13 -0700 2008 more...]]> 2 0 false false Fri Apr 17 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jan 05 14:04:32 -0800 2009 Fri Apr 17 06:56:28 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Aug 15 18:31:24 -0700 2007 Wed Aug 15 18:40:16 -0700 2007 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=96200