Irish Lit & Times discussion
Sebastian Barry
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I also liked "The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty", but haven't read any of his other work.
So many books, so little time.



There also seems a bitterness in this (and from what I've read about his other works in those as well) about the 'displacement' of Anglo- or Protestant Irish after independence. A bitterness that one doesn't see in William Trevor's work (for example), which covers some of the same ground; and Trevor, in his own experience, is much closer to the historical events. It would make for an interesting comparison for some grad thesis or disertation. Not only on strictly literary grounds, but socio-politcal: what happens in a post-colonial society when the oppressing minority becomes the oppressed minority?
Good stuff, though. I'm interested to see how it plays out and would like to read A Long, Long Way.

I was originally fascinated with Eneas McNulty because the McNulty family hailed from Strandhill in Co. Sligo, where my grandfather was born and raised, and Eneas himself felt the wrath of the nationalist community by becoming an officer of the Royal Irish Constabulary just before WWI and the Irish uprising, as one of my great-uncles did.
Annie Dunne and her Waterford family are minor figures in Eneas McNulty, and it is Annie's brother who is the main character who experiences hell in the trenches as a British doughboy in Long, Long Way.
Barry is a great storyteller, and his prose is about as beautiful as I've read since Thomas Flanagan's "Year of the French."
He is also a poet and a playwright.
Anybody familiar with Barry or his work?