Days Without End: AN IRISH TIMES BEST IRISH BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY

by Sebastian Barry

He may be an angel in the clothes of a devil or a devil in the clothes of an angel but either way you’re talking to two when you talk to one Irishman. He can’t help you enough and he can’t double-cross you deep enough ever either. An Irish trooper is the bravest man in the field and the most cowardly. I don’t know what it

They perished like stray cats, no one caring much. But the whole town was perishing. On the riverbank, where the port was, the ships were still coming into harbour and embarking, but not by my father’s order no more. The

The point is, we were nothing. No one wanted us. Canada was a-feared of us. We were a plague. We were only rats of people. Hunger takes away what you are. Everything we were was just nothing then. Talk, music, Sligo, stories, future, past, it was all turned to something very like the shit of animals. When I met John Cole that’s who I was, a human louse, even evil people shunned me and the good had no use for me. That’s where I started.

I am thinking of the days without end of my life.