Days Without End (Days Without End, #1) in Reading with Style

Jul 06, 2019 Connie G rated it it was amazing

Shelves: war, historical-fiction, western, literary-fiction, tennessee, war-american-civil, missouri

Thomas McNulty saw his parents and sister die in the Great Famine in Ireland. The orphaned boy traveled to America by way of Quebec, and ended up in Missouri as a teenager. Jobs were scarce for the Irish and he ends up fighting as a soldier clearing the Indians off the American Great Plains in the 1850s. He and his fellow soldier and lover, John Cole, take care of an orphaned Sioux girl and form a family. The two men later fight for the Union in the Civil War.

In addition to the Irish Famine, a t ...more

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May 10, 2019 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: library, twenty-first-century, 5-star-reads, awards-man-booker, awards-walter-scott

I will be hard put to review this. First, I'd just like to say that if you look at any of the 1-star reviews here, they all complain about the voice of the novel. That voice is a poorly educated Irish immigrant. Perhaps those 1-star people think poorly educated means ignorant and therefore cannot possibly be able to observe the natural world. I myself think that if you live in the natural world, you are better off not having much education because book learning would likely interfere with your a I will be hard put to review this. First, I'd just like to say that if you look at any of the 1-star reviews here, they all complain about the voice of the novel. That voice is a poorly educated Irish immigrant. Perhaps those 1-star people think poorly educated means ignorant and therefore cannot possibly be able to observe the natural world. I myself think that if you live in the natural world, you are better off not having much education because book learning would likely interfere with your ability to observe and appreciate it.

My point of view is that even if you don't like the story, the voice of the novel is what carries it. You could read it just for that alone and not have wasted a single second of your time. I managed to sticky-note a dozen or more one line passages.

We were sweating like window-glass in the winter.

You could arrest sunlight for attempted murder out on the plains.

Hurbert Longfield pulls on his string and the gun roars. It is the roar of one hundred lions in a small room.

Snow falling like bread of heaven that won't feed no Israelite.

... and then heaped up high the black mountains and haircuts of snow on top.

No such item as virtuous people.

Fear burns my belly like a nest of Mexican chillies.

The story isn't half-bad either. It begins in 1851 with two young men - boys, really - in Missouri. Perhaps those other reviewers haven't thought much about what Missouri was like in 1851. It was a hard life, mostly rural, with a few scattered towns dotted here and there. There were no trains, no paved roads, mostly no women. What would a group of miners do for the illusion of a woman to dance with? (And it's always possible those miners believed the illusion, though we aren't given their point of view.) The young men become grown up men, fight in the Indian Wars, and then for the Union in the Civil War.

I might have wanted more in the way of characterization, but I did come to know the characters well enough to have felt for them. The last 40 pages was, to me, gripping.

I have had the privilege of reading some very good books this past few months, and this will stand toward the top of the bunch. There are few books I might choose to read more than once and this would be one of them. 5-stars. ...more

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