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Long Time, No See
The funny, moving, long-awaited masterwork from "Ireland’s finest living novelist" (Roddy Doyle) Celebrated Irish author Dermot Healy’s first novel in more than ten years is a rich, beguiling, compassionate, and wonderfully funny story about community, family, love, and bonds across generations. Set in an isolated coastal town in northwest Ireland, Long Time, No See centers around an unforgettable cast of innocents and wounded, broken misfits. The story is narrated by a young man known as Mister Psyche who takes up with and is then drawn into a series of bemusing and unsettling misadventures with two men some fifty years his senior—his grand uncle Joejoe and Joejoe’s neighbor The Blackbird—wonderful, eccentric characters full of ancient jealousies and grudges and holding some very dark secrets. Written with great lyrical power and a vivid sense of place and published to rapturous reviews in England and Ireland, Long Time, No See is a sad-comic tapestry of life and death that celebrates the incredibly rich lives of ordinary people.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2011
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798 people want to read
About the author
Dermot Healy
34 books41 followersDermot Healy (born 1947 in Finnea, County Westmeath, Ireland) was an Irish novelist, playwright and poet. He won the Hennessy Award (1974 and 1976), the Tom Gallon Award (1983), and the Encore Award (1995). In 2011, he was shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award for his poetry collection, A Fool's Errand.
Healy was a member of Aosdána and of its governing body, the Toscaireacht, and lived in County Sligo, Ireland.
Healy was a member of Aosdána and of its governing body, the Toscaireacht, and lived in County Sligo, Ireland.
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April 5, 2020Reviewed in December 2012
Reading is like being a fisherman; we sail out from terra firma with high hopes and we trawl the sea of words in search of a catch that will make the trip worthwhile. When the catch contains a species we recognise, one that is associated in our memory with great experiences, so much the better.
If reading Dermot Healy’s Long Time, No See had been a fishing trip, my net would have been very full, and the variety of fish it contained would have been both exotic and comfortingly familiar. The following is a selection of quotes from a number of sources which mirror that fishing trip for me. The quotes have been trawled from the work of the many Irish writers I was reminded of while reading Healy's work—and whom I believe to have been the conscious or unconscious inspiration for his intrinsically Irish and intensely human approach to writing. Together, the quotes give a little foretaste, and a sort of plot summary, of the bizarre and wonderful world of Long Time, No See.
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
It is the timber of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms.
I won't go out again. I won't go down again. I'll stay where I am. I'll stay here, in my bed.
"Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand."
Once I was looking through the kitchen window at dusk and I saw an old woman looking in. Suddenly the light changed and I realized that the old woman was myself
Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better.
When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.
Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.
And there's the half-talk code of mysteries
And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Their hands, swinging, touched lightly now and then; their nearness was as natural as the June day.
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
The past beats inside me like a second heart.
The Bible was a consolation to a fellow alone in the old cell. The lovely thin paper with a bit of mattress stuffing in it, if you could get a match, was as good a smoke as I ever tasted.
That's the Irish People all over – they treat a joke as a serious thing and a serious thing as a joke.
The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles...when a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones.
There were children and a dog on the white fairgreen and the town band marched again on its fourth lap of the town as if it was condemned to wander for all eternity until all the tunes came right.
The single sandal found among the rocks became a sodden image of death; and as the keening on the pier at Kilauran traditionally marked distress brought by the sea, so did silence at Lahardane.
My father...was a man who understood all dogs thoroughly and treated them like human beings.
It’s only after years that you get some shape on things, and then after all that you have to leave. It’s comical.
I have done my best to set down the character of the people about me so that some record of us might live after us, for the like of us will never be again.
In slow distaste
I fold my towel with what grace I can,
Not young, and not renewable, but man.
…………………………
Reading is like being a fisherman; we sail out from terra firma with high hopes and we trawl the sea of words in search of a catch that will make the trip worthwhile. When the catch contains a species we recognise, one that is associated in our memory with great experiences, so much the better.
If reading Dermot Healy’s Long Time, No See had been a fishing trip, my net would have been very full, and the variety of fish it contained would have been both exotic and comfortingly familiar. The following is a selection of quotes from a number of sources which mirror that fishing trip for me. The quotes have been trawled from the work of the many Irish writers I was reminded of while reading Healy's work—and whom I believe to have been the conscious or unconscious inspiration for his intrinsically Irish and intensely human approach to writing. Together, the quotes give a little foretaste, and a sort of plot summary, of the bizarre and wonderful world of Long Time, No See.
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
It is the timber of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms.
I won't go out again. I won't go down again. I'll stay where I am. I'll stay here, in my bed.
"Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand."
Once I was looking through the kitchen window at dusk and I saw an old woman looking in. Suddenly the light changed and I realized that the old woman was myself
Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better.
When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.
Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.
And there's the half-talk code of mysteries
And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Their hands, swinging, touched lightly now and then; their nearness was as natural as the June day.
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
The past beats inside me like a second heart.
The Bible was a consolation to a fellow alone in the old cell. The lovely thin paper with a bit of mattress stuffing in it, if you could get a match, was as good a smoke as I ever tasted.
That's the Irish People all over – they treat a joke as a serious thing and a serious thing as a joke.
The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles...when a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones.
There were children and a dog on the white fairgreen and the town band marched again on its fourth lap of the town as if it was condemned to wander for all eternity until all the tunes came right.
The single sandal found among the rocks became a sodden image of death; and as the keening on the pier at Kilauran traditionally marked distress brought by the sea, so did silence at Lahardane.
My father...was a man who understood all dogs thoroughly and treated them like human beings.
It’s only after years that you get some shape on things, and then after all that you have to leave. It’s comical.
I have done my best to set down the character of the people about me so that some record of us might live after us, for the like of us will never be again.
In slow distaste
I fold my towel with what grace I can,
Not young, and not renewable, but man.
…………………………
February 16, 2012
I love this book. I love the people. I love the way they treat each other. The way they love each other. Healy treats his characters so gently, takes such care with them, has such a delicate touch. There are no throwaway characters, no unnecessary incidents, no pointless details. This is the story of a community, the story of a season or two, of lives that are completely intertwined, with some magic and loss and hilarity. I love everything about it. It's a book I'll read again.
June 30, 2021
Another chance discovery in a second hand shop, this was the late Dermot Healy's last novel. I first encountered his writing many years ago when I read A Goat's Song, which is still probably his best book, but this one, like its predecessor Sudden Times, is a lot lighter in tone, and is very funny in places, though the two core events in this rites of passage story set in a small village in the west of Ireland are both deaths.
I had to read the opening chapter twice, as Healy makes no real allowance for introductions, pitching us straight into the world of its teenaged narrator Philip Feeney (aka Mister Psyche), who spends much of his time looking after and providing alcohol to his old uncle Joejoe and his friend the Blackbird, and their dogs. The confusion is partly created by the fact that many of the characters are known by several different nicknames, but this disorientation soon disappears, replaced by a sense of the claustrophobia of life in the small village. Philip has a relationship of sorts with Anna, another local girl who spends much of her time as an unpaid servant, that never really progresses but provides much of the humour.
As always with Healy it is the quality of the writing that makes the book such an enjoyable read, and this affectionate portrait of a closed community is ultimately quite moving.
I had to read the opening chapter twice, as Healy makes no real allowance for introductions, pitching us straight into the world of its teenaged narrator Philip Feeney (aka Mister Psyche), who spends much of his time looking after and providing alcohol to his old uncle Joejoe and his friend the Blackbird, and their dogs. The confusion is partly created by the fact that many of the characters are known by several different nicknames, but this disorientation soon disappears, replaced by a sense of the claustrophobia of life in the small village. Philip has a relationship of sorts with Anna, another local girl who spends much of her time as an unpaid servant, that never really progresses but provides much of the humour.
As always with Healy it is the quality of the writing that makes the book such an enjoyable read, and this affectionate portrait of a closed community is ultimately quite moving.
June 21, 2014
You're a good man, Mister Psyche. That's only one of Philip Feeney's names. And he is a good man. He is.
Philip is the protagonist of this very different book. It came recommended highly from friends, here in Goodreads and in real life. And it is different, not in any experimental way, not post-modern, not minimalist either.
I kept waiting for something to happen. A rifle is introduced early, and we know what Chekhov said. But maybe Dermot Healy never read Chekhov. Hippies appear. Angry dogs. I felt foreboding that never metastasized. No suicides, no homicides, no rapes, no child abuse. Philip has a girlfriend, Anna. They are not tested. No jealousy. He likes her parents; she likes his. There are deaths. One, before the time of this book, still lingers, that of Philip's friend Mickey. But it isn't a plot twist, nor a slowly revealed explanation. The other deaths are because it's time.
What happens though, is that we come to like Philip. And Anna. The old men. And the silhouette people who slowly come to life, intersect with Philip, and recede. I kept waiting for the asshole, the demon, the darkness to Philip's light. It never came.
So, you have to be satisfied that this is a book about a Good Man. Sometimes that is plenty. This book reminded me of It's All Right Now by Charles Chadwick, a book that teaches that it's never too late.
---- ---- ---- ----
Last night I was nearing the end of this book. I liked it all right. But I kept waiting for that ah-ha moment to arrive. It hadn't to that point. I found a new vodka: Golia. It was very nice with Castelvetrano olives. I put on Keith Jarrett's 2005 Carnegie Hall Concert*. Healey's words started to illuminate.
You'll be drenched. Take the auld umbrella with you.
I will.
And don't be worrying son.
I won't.
Good man. Spell the word mystery.
M-y-s-t-e-r-y.
One night here you know what that man Gary said; he said the whole thing was a mystery, and then he asked me what the word mystery sounds like, and I said I don't know, and he said it sounds like my story.
I took the auld black umbrella, and he stood behind the door, opened it a fraction and the rain beat in, then I dived out and hoisted the umbrella and the door crashed closed behind me.
I had, as they say, a moment.
---- ---- ---- ----
*I couldn't find the particular music on youtube, but this is close:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeVyPZ...
You'll have to find the vodka yourself.
Philip is the protagonist of this very different book. It came recommended highly from friends, here in Goodreads and in real life. And it is different, not in any experimental way, not post-modern, not minimalist either.
I kept waiting for something to happen. A rifle is introduced early, and we know what Chekhov said. But maybe Dermot Healy never read Chekhov. Hippies appear. Angry dogs. I felt foreboding that never metastasized. No suicides, no homicides, no rapes, no child abuse. Philip has a girlfriend, Anna. They are not tested. No jealousy. He likes her parents; she likes his. There are deaths. One, before the time of this book, still lingers, that of Philip's friend Mickey. But it isn't a plot twist, nor a slowly revealed explanation. The other deaths are because it's time.
What happens though, is that we come to like Philip. And Anna. The old men. And the silhouette people who slowly come to life, intersect with Philip, and recede. I kept waiting for the asshole, the demon, the darkness to Philip's light. It never came.
So, you have to be satisfied that this is a book about a Good Man. Sometimes that is plenty. This book reminded me of It's All Right Now by Charles Chadwick, a book that teaches that it's never too late.
---- ---- ---- ----
Last night I was nearing the end of this book. I liked it all right. But I kept waiting for that ah-ha moment to arrive. It hadn't to that point. I found a new vodka: Golia. It was very nice with Castelvetrano olives. I put on Keith Jarrett's 2005 Carnegie Hall Concert*. Healey's words started to illuminate.
You'll be drenched. Take the auld umbrella with you.
I will.
And don't be worrying son.
I won't.
Good man. Spell the word mystery.
M-y-s-t-e-r-y.
One night here you know what that man Gary said; he said the whole thing was a mystery, and then he asked me what the word mystery sounds like, and I said I don't know, and he said it sounds like my story.
I took the auld black umbrella, and he stood behind the door, opened it a fraction and the rain beat in, then I dived out and hoisted the umbrella and the door crashed closed behind me.
I had, as they say, a moment.
---- ---- ---- ----
*I couldn't find the particular music on youtube, but this is close:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeVyPZ...
You'll have to find the vodka yourself.
October 16, 2014
someone on facebook had this on their feed, and I want to acknowledge but can't now find! Anyway the feed led me to this review by none other than Annie Proulx: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011...
I'm already a fan of his short stories (Banished Misfortune). Beautiful, and also enjoyed his novel Sudden Times.
So, off to the library...
...70 pages in, another Irish book but so different from the last one - A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. [Now finished] The latter was intense, anguished, difficult, with community second to individual needs and hypocrisy everywhere. This book is laid back, a community that is always helpful to its inhabitants and to passing strangers, where religion is lightly applied, and death although grieved over is accepted. A truly beautiful book, full of odd characters: Joejoe the grumpy old man who may or may not have shot a hole in his window, his companion Bird who sees ghost hens. The narrator is a 16 year old boy, also a companion to Joejoe and birdie (getting them their fags, doing errands, to the point of smearing cream over the naked Joejoe to help with his eczema). His family are pretty everyday, his dad a builder, his mum a nurse. But even they do strange things like drive into town and wander about not acknowledging each other. However they are perfect citizens when it comes to helping others, giving passing Polish hitchhikers a room for the night or feeding Bird's dog through the letterbox when he goes to hospital and won't let them have the key. It's all framed by the sea and the mountains of (west coast?) Ireland. It is a book to love, in which not a lot happens, except life and death.
I'm already a fan of his short stories (Banished Misfortune). Beautiful, and also enjoyed his novel Sudden Times.
So, off to the library...
...70 pages in, another Irish book but so different from the last one - A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. [Now finished] The latter was intense, anguished, difficult, with community second to individual needs and hypocrisy everywhere. This book is laid back, a community that is always helpful to its inhabitants and to passing strangers, where religion is lightly applied, and death although grieved over is accepted. A truly beautiful book, full of odd characters: Joejoe the grumpy old man who may or may not have shot a hole in his window, his companion Bird who sees ghost hens. The narrator is a 16 year old boy, also a companion to Joejoe and birdie (getting them their fags, doing errands, to the point of smearing cream over the naked Joejoe to help with his eczema). His family are pretty everyday, his dad a builder, his mum a nurse. But even they do strange things like drive into town and wander about not acknowledging each other. However they are perfect citizens when it comes to helping others, giving passing Polish hitchhikers a room for the night or feeding Bird's dog through the letterbox when he goes to hospital and won't let them have the key. It's all framed by the sea and the mountains of (west coast?) Ireland. It is a book to love, in which not a lot happens, except life and death.
July 25, 2014
Dermot Healy died suddenly June 29th, 2914. With John McGahern, he was probably the best writer of this Irish generation. As a poet, Seamus Heaney described him as the heir to Patrick Kavanagh. As a social commentator, through his novels that I have read, he would be cut from the same stone as McGahern and John B. Keane, and the more modern Roddy Doyle. Healy and McGahern captured decent people in intimate rural communities, people who depended on and supported each other. Rich dialects were transferred to the page, as were eccentricities and characterisations, daily lives with all their events and sagas, solitariness and loneliness of rural life and eventual deaths, culminating in mourning of and celebrations of lives passed. In many ways Healy's writing celebrated his neighbours' and readers' ordinary, but, decent, lives. People who did their best while above ground.
His autobiography "Bend For Home" is superb, capturing a young boy, losing his Garda father (McGahern also had a Garda father, though of different character) and his move from a village, Finea in Offaly, to a town, Cavan - "from a familiar world to an alien one". He did the enforced Irish emigrant's prolonged stints in Dublin and London, tough years as a security officer in Heathrow warehouses, reading Dylan Thomas, and some squatting with insecure and uncertain subsistence. My favourite novel is "A Goat's Song", set around "The Troubles", with themes of destructive love, alcoholism, sectarian violence with a quest and personal journey "to belong". I have yet to explore, and research for reading, his apparently highly rated poetry, supposedly steeped in the Kavanagh traditions.
This book, "Long Time No See", his final published novel and a fitting epitaph and book-end to his body of work is a very intimate portrait of a rural community, supporting itself and each other, where ages mix and prove no barriers. As the blurb from "The Independent" says: "unforgettable... nothing happens, but everything happens. Time passes. People die. It all seems so true to actual life, so tangible and aithentic." I didn't want this book to end.
Anyone, like me, who has been fortunate enough to holiday, or live for short periods, in these communities will verify the close knit communities, how the people live for each other and the authenticity of this narrative. The novel centres around and is narrated by a young adult, who has just left school and is working as a local handyman awaiting his Leaving Cert. (A-Level, High School Graduation) results, Philip Feeney, a decent person who spends his life with his not too serious girlfriend and caring for the older members of his rural coastal community, which is all expertly captured. He is probably on the cusp of leaving the community for college and then work before building a life away. Healy probably draws from his living at Rosses Point in Sligo, as close to the forces and beauty of coastal nature as one could get.
I got the U.S. edition in a sale and would love to know how this novel "travelled". Annie Proulx literary territory in the U.S.- Wyoming etc? People in Ireland and the U.K. will have no trouble "seeing" this social commentary and stepping into the story. A great book from a great Irish artist who will be missed.
His autobiography "Bend For Home" is superb, capturing a young boy, losing his Garda father (McGahern also had a Garda father, though of different character) and his move from a village, Finea in Offaly, to a town, Cavan - "from a familiar world to an alien one". He did the enforced Irish emigrant's prolonged stints in Dublin and London, tough years as a security officer in Heathrow warehouses, reading Dylan Thomas, and some squatting with insecure and uncertain subsistence. My favourite novel is "A Goat's Song", set around "The Troubles", with themes of destructive love, alcoholism, sectarian violence with a quest and personal journey "to belong". I have yet to explore, and research for reading, his apparently highly rated poetry, supposedly steeped in the Kavanagh traditions.
This book, "Long Time No See", his final published novel and a fitting epitaph and book-end to his body of work is a very intimate portrait of a rural community, supporting itself and each other, where ages mix and prove no barriers. As the blurb from "The Independent" says: "unforgettable... nothing happens, but everything happens. Time passes. People die. It all seems so true to actual life, so tangible and aithentic." I didn't want this book to end.
Anyone, like me, who has been fortunate enough to holiday, or live for short periods, in these communities will verify the close knit communities, how the people live for each other and the authenticity of this narrative. The novel centres around and is narrated by a young adult, who has just left school and is working as a local handyman awaiting his Leaving Cert. (A-Level, High School Graduation) results, Philip Feeney, a decent person who spends his life with his not too serious girlfriend and caring for the older members of his rural coastal community, which is all expertly captured. He is probably on the cusp of leaving the community for college and then work before building a life away. Healy probably draws from his living at Rosses Point in Sligo, as close to the forces and beauty of coastal nature as one could get.
I got the U.S. edition in a sale and would love to know how this novel "travelled". Annie Proulx literary territory in the U.S.- Wyoming etc? People in Ireland and the U.K. will have no trouble "seeing" this social commentary and stepping into the story. A great book from a great Irish artist who will be missed.
April 3, 2011
Discovering a book that, upon its reading, makes you feel like you've come home is a rarity and yet this is exactly how I felt about Long Time, No See. Our narrator has just finished school and is spending the summer taking care of his grand-uncle, Joe-Joe, and Joe-Joe's best friend, The Blackbird. What should be an easy task is complicated by strange nocturnal occurrences and also by the men's endearing stubbornness. Healy takes mundane events and imbues them with a mystical quality. Not only that: he has perfectly captured the quirks of living in the wild and windy west of Ireland. His characters are full of depth, life and soul and you’ll feel an immediate affection for them. He has exquisitely captured the majestic landscape of Sligo and its people, with a language and a narrative force that are simply breath-taking.
March 2, 2023
i loved this book so much, there was a beautiful absence of time predicated on the fact that we were waiting for time to suddenly take back up again and be faster to make up for time stretched out. there was a sense of tragedy that seemed to be coming from all directions, i don’t want to say there was also joy because it was much more complicated than that, but there were so many wonderful moments in this community where no one is called by their real name and often they share last names without sharing blood.
wish i could have stayed in this book forever, but the ending, as an ending ought to, gently pries you away from its world and sends you back home.
maybe i’ll move to ireland now.
wish i could have stayed in this book forever, but the ending, as an ending ought to, gently pries you away from its world and sends you back home.
maybe i’ll move to ireland now.
March 21, 2011
Have you ever read a book all the way through and felt that you missed something really big? You get that unsettling feeling that perhaps the whole thing is one big allegory that you failed to get. Or maybe you were daydreaming through the crucial paragraph that knits the whole book together.
That's the feeling I had after reading Long Time, No See. The quality of the writing was excellent throughout, and Dermot Healy spent 11 years writing this book, so I'm sure he had something important to say. But I just don't know what it was. I enjoyed the lively writing, the well-drawn characters, the intriguing situations, but in the end it didn't seem to lead to anything much. The characters didn't seem to develop in any meaningful way, and the various mysteries in the plot were either left unresolved or were resolved in a way that felt like an anticlimax. For example the bullet hole in Joejoe's window was just caused by him firing off his gun. There's a lot of buildup and suspicion and then it was just an old man firing off his gun by mistake.
Again, maybe I'm missing something, but it felt as if the whole book was like that - plot points were developed just to the point where they had the potential to be interesting, and then were dropped. Mister Psyche grapples with the recent death of his friend in a car crash - or at least you expect him to, but he doesn't really do much grappling. He's just sad sometimes, and then he builds a wall. Perhaps the wall is symbolic, or perhaps it isn't. Mister Psyche has an odd relationship with his girlfriend Anna, with hardly any emotion or affection and not much contact except by mobile phone. Again, we don't find out why this is, and nothing much changes about it.
Perhaps Healy is trying to say that that's how life really is, that it's not that interesting or dramatic, that there is no neat or satisfying resolution, that events don't have a point in the end. If so, he's probably right about that, but it doesn't make for a very engaging read. Or perhaps the characters and plot are developing in interesting ways, but it's all so understated that I missed it. I don't generally need, or want, to have everything spelled out for me, and nor do I need a nice neat resolution, but I like to have something happen and for it to a bit plainer than it was here.
My overall feeling about this book was that it was a beautifully written and intriguing (and very long!) setup for a great novel, but the story didn't develop as I'd hoped it would.
That's the feeling I had after reading Long Time, No See. The quality of the writing was excellent throughout, and Dermot Healy spent 11 years writing this book, so I'm sure he had something important to say. But I just don't know what it was. I enjoyed the lively writing, the well-drawn characters, the intriguing situations, but in the end it didn't seem to lead to anything much. The characters didn't seem to develop in any meaningful way, and the various mysteries in the plot were either left unresolved or were resolved in a way that felt like an anticlimax. For example the bullet hole in Joejoe's window was just caused by him firing off his gun. There's a lot of buildup and suspicion and then it was just an old man firing off his gun by mistake.
Again, maybe I'm missing something, but it felt as if the whole book was like that - plot points were developed just to the point where they had the potential to be interesting, and then were dropped. Mister Psyche grapples with the recent death of his friend in a car crash - or at least you expect him to, but he doesn't really do much grappling. He's just sad sometimes, and then he builds a wall. Perhaps the wall is symbolic, or perhaps it isn't. Mister Psyche has an odd relationship with his girlfriend Anna, with hardly any emotion or affection and not much contact except by mobile phone. Again, we don't find out why this is, and nothing much changes about it.
Perhaps Healy is trying to say that that's how life really is, that it's not that interesting or dramatic, that there is no neat or satisfying resolution, that events don't have a point in the end. If so, he's probably right about that, but it doesn't make for a very engaging read. Or perhaps the characters and plot are developing in interesting ways, but it's all so understated that I missed it. I don't generally need, or want, to have everything spelled out for me, and nor do I need a nice neat resolution, but I like to have something happen and for it to a bit plainer than it was here.
My overall feeling about this book was that it was a beautifully written and intriguing (and very long!) setup for a great novel, but the story didn't develop as I'd hoped it would.
June 21, 2012
I am so sorry that I evidently couldn't "get" the "charm" or "message" of this book. Most reviewers seemed to be enchanted with it, believing each character was well fleshed out, treated gently and with grace in the prose,but I had to abandon it early on before I went stark raving mad.I am well acquainted with Irish literature and humor and love most all of it that I read. I found this novel hard to follow and could not muster up interest in the characters or their lives.I couldn't follow who was speaking; everyone seemed to just chime in to the point that I had to keep going back to figure out who was saying what to whom and why.Perhaps it was because of being a galley copy, but I found the punctuation, especially quotations marks sadly lacking and the formatting was strange. I especially feel bad about that since I was gifted an advance copy and very much appreciated being chosen to receive it. Perhaps I can re-visit it at a later date.
November 29, 2020
A very lovely read. The kind of book that develops a world and people you enjoy being with. The prose is beautifully and skillfully written. The setting is ethereal in ways. But I felt that the synopsis was misleading. I was waiting around for more most of the time. Will Mister Psyche have a breakdown or pivotal moment? Who shot the hole in Joejoe's window after all? I suspect that the whole book is just about life and how we just push through it the best we can and sometimes we don't get any answers. But that's life. I'd rather escape from that in my books. Again, masterfully written, but not where I thought it was going.
August 7, 2013
I loved this book, and, after having put aside a couple of books without finishing them, it reminded me about how wonderful it can be to read an excellent novel. This story takes place in an Irish coastal village in 2006. The narrator is a young man who is just finishing school and preparing for college. We see all that he sees but it is more as though we are hearing what he hears and seeing what he sees. The novel has plot elements, but it isn't plot driven. Overall, we realize what doesn't change with the times is the importance of community, friendship, family, and caring about others. This is not a sentimental book with a simplified message.
June 21, 2013
This book is really good. It takes you away to a place in Ireland where people are so close to each other, they can read each other's feelings so well. Tourists are treated as family. I just loved it. I would recommend this book to anyone.
July 2, 2019
Memorable characters on the Donegal coast - not much plot but wonderful dialogue and a tinge of Joycean surrealism.
May 28, 2025
A little tough to get into but the second half really got me
August 19, 2011
The Irish and the Irish way of life. Funny, sad, clever and wise. This is a side of Ireland that perhaps the Irish know well, but as a visitor it is perhaps a privilege to enter this world. The story starts with the coming and goings of a young lad, Psyche. We move into his home, with his parents. For the next 400 pages we will visits his granduncle and many of the villages Characters. The love demonstrated amongst this family and this community if frankly heartwarming.
As I read this book, I kept wondering, well, what is going to happen here? Is something amazing or interesting going on... Well, yes. Life. Life how it should be. Spending time with loved ones, defining out existence based on others. Taking care of them and helping each other out. For the first 200 pages i expected something major... then I didn't want the book to be over, I just wanted to continue with this family, with this group. I actually want to drive over there an enter their houses and spent some time, drinking wine with them, or visiting with them at the pub.
A lovely praise of Ireland and its way of life.
As I read this book, I kept wondering, well, what is going to happen here? Is something amazing or interesting going on... Well, yes. Life. Life how it should be. Spending time with loved ones, defining out existence based on others. Taking care of them and helping each other out. For the first 200 pages i expected something major... then I didn't want the book to be over, I just wanted to continue with this family, with this group. I actually want to drive over there an enter their houses and spent some time, drinking wine with them, or visiting with them at the pub.
A lovely praise of Ireland and its way of life.
July 25, 2014
My introduction to Dermot Healy was, unfortunately, his death notice late last month in the Irish press.
In this novel set during recent times in a rural area in the West of Ireland, death is always near, as accidental death, and then later, age and infirmaties, overtake first friends and then a relative. Nursing and aging with dignity at home among family and familiar touchstones are important themes.
When death comes, the dead are waked at home, candles are burned in the windows, the coffin supported on four chairs, and the vigil is kept throughout the night. The grave is dug by the family and the helpers in the family plot in local cemetery. If bones of ancestors are encountered, move over a bit and dig deeper. After, there's a meal at the local restaurant.
So many lovely vignettes of life in the west of modern Ireland. I'm sorry he's gone.
In this novel set during recent times in a rural area in the West of Ireland, death is always near, as accidental death, and then later, age and infirmaties, overtake first friends and then a relative. Nursing and aging with dignity at home among family and familiar touchstones are important themes.
When death comes, the dead are waked at home, candles are burned in the windows, the coffin supported on four chairs, and the vigil is kept throughout the night. The grave is dug by the family and the helpers in the family plot in local cemetery. If bones of ancestors are encountered, move over a bit and dig deeper. After, there's a meal at the local restaurant.
So many lovely vignettes of life in the west of modern Ireland. I'm sorry he's gone.
October 11, 2022
Mixed feelings here. Poetic and lyrical, but also, way too much phlegm - there was a "loogie" on the last page that is now my lasting impression. There was a good mix of players but they were not very distinguishable from each other in character. The set-up took 75% of the book and the main story only the last little bit. And OMG what is it with Irish authors and punctuation (Roddy Doyle I'm looking at you!).
February 7, 2021
Dermot: These people live a quiet life in rural irland. They're all a little odd in their own way but they look out for eachother.
Me: How delightful! How lovely!
Dermot: They are all very sad.
Me: Why Dermot? Why?
Me: How delightful! How lovely!
Dermot: They are all very sad.
Me: Why Dermot? Why?
May 6, 2022
Who can adequately write a review of Dermot Healy? Not me. Spending time each reading with the precious Feeney family I felt like I was one of them. Thank you sweet Dermot for letting me tag along.
March 20, 2021
You know that feeling when you visit your grandparents and they start to tell you stories? There are several characters coming and going, you're not sure how they are related to each other, stuff are happening but you're not quite sure (and you just nod), and the stories just kept on going and going. To me, this book is amusing in that sense.
Not my cup of tea but it is quite charming in a rustic, nostalgic way. Reminded me of my grandfather who used to tell me stories of his life, the people he met and lost through the years. I wasn't sure I was following every bit of it, but I still kept listening.
Not my cup of tea but it is quite charming in a rustic, nostalgic way. Reminded me of my grandfather who used to tell me stories of his life, the people he met and lost through the years. I wasn't sure I was following every bit of it, but I still kept listening.
August 31, 2025
I resented this book for how long it was, and how little payoff there was. I wish I'd abandoned it 50 pages in, but I kept thinking it would get more interesting because it had the right ingredients: a shadowy trauma in the background, unique characters, a great landscape. But no. You finally get the story of the traumatic event on p. 326, but by then you don't care that much. Nothing really happens for most of the book, and the character I really wanted to know about, Anna, is just in the background. There were some interesting moments here, but nothing that added up to being worth 433 pages.
June 16, 2019
This book definitely took me someplace new: rural Ireland. The characters were interesting. It's a slice of life type of novel. I had to get used to the writing style of no quotation marks. It's quirky, that's the best way to describe this novel. It's sweet.
July 28, 2025
I thought I would like this more. The lack of punctuation annoyed me, I never got fully behind the characters, and nothing really happened. I know it's much deeper than I have the energy to comprehend, but - meh.
August 5, 2025
I lucked up at Dollar Tree the other day, finding Dermot Healy's poetic vision of the people of a sea and wind swept Irish village, "Long Time, No See". Hardback. What fun reading! Love, grief, and spiritual journeys.
April 18, 2020
The poetry of everyday life and human interaction. It feels like a ballad, gorgeous pace and language. I loved it.
December 30, 2020
I love this book. It takes you so deep and far into the intimate intricacies of an Irish village that you almost stop feeling like a stranger. It's the second time I've read it. I only realized this after reading at least one third of it again. Watch this spot for more reviews by demented people.
January 4, 2024
Highly recommended.
'Funny, sad, wild, tender, profound, brilliant, Healy. ' RODDY DOYLE
'Funny, sad, wild, tender, profound, brilliant, Healy. ' RODDY DOYLE
March 5, 2021
I was quite confused half the time, but it could have been just me? The way it was written was kind of annoying, like with no apostrophes. However it was quite funny
August 5, 2012
I received this ARC free from Goodreads First Reads.
Long Time, No See is the literary equivalent of viewing a butterfly wing under a microscope and seeing how each of the individual scales has a beauty of its own, while still appreciating the exquisiteness of the whole. In this case, we have an examination of the minutiae of the daily life of an Irish teen in a close-knit, small community. While each day just seems to be one more of the same 'ol, same 'ol--working odd jobs around town, checking in with his neighboring great-uncle, chats with the girlfriend and parents--they really build a compelling portrait of family, friendship, love, and grief.
Philip Feeney, aka Mister Psyche, is on the cusp between secondary school and college. He's in a bit of a daze, due to the death of a close friend right at the end of the school year, and you can see that he's pretty much going from day to day rather than making big plans for the future. He's very close to his great-uncle Joejoe and Joejoe's friend the Blackbird, visiting with them daily and doing household chores and running errands and such as needed. Through his various errands and odd jobs, we also get introduced to the colorful neighbors that make up his community. As the summer progresses, Philip is forced to deal with the inevitability of the aging process, primarily that of Joejoe's, but to some extent his own as well. You can't say that a whole lot really happens in the book, but there is a surprising beauty and emotional depth expressed in just taking each day as it comes. Though they all have mobile phones, the cross-generational closeness between characters and the simplicity of their daily activities evokes a sense of the past.
As an American, I found this book to be be an interesting insight to the Irish mind and lifestyle. The word "funny" is used multiple times on the back cover, and while I could recognize the humor in many of the situations, I typically found myself more bemused than amused at the daily goings on in the Feeney households. Just the matter-of-fact description of what they did for entertainment on a Saturday night I found both astounding and yet intriguing in its simplicity. The stream of consciousness style was at times disconcerting, especially in the lack of quotation marks, and since I'm not familiar with the culture I think it made me work a little harder to be sure I kept up with everything going on, but it was certainly effective at establishing a mood and a sense of connection to how Philip's feeling. The ending was expected, but I found myself surprised at how emotionally affected I was by it.
Long Time, No See is the literary equivalent of viewing a butterfly wing under a microscope and seeing how each of the individual scales has a beauty of its own, while still appreciating the exquisiteness of the whole. In this case, we have an examination of the minutiae of the daily life of an Irish teen in a close-knit, small community. While each day just seems to be one more of the same 'ol, same 'ol--working odd jobs around town, checking in with his neighboring great-uncle, chats with the girlfriend and parents--they really build a compelling portrait of family, friendship, love, and grief.
Philip Feeney, aka Mister Psyche, is on the cusp between secondary school and college. He's in a bit of a daze, due to the death of a close friend right at the end of the school year, and you can see that he's pretty much going from day to day rather than making big plans for the future. He's very close to his great-uncle Joejoe and Joejoe's friend the Blackbird, visiting with them daily and doing household chores and running errands and such as needed. Through his various errands and odd jobs, we also get introduced to the colorful neighbors that make up his community. As the summer progresses, Philip is forced to deal with the inevitability of the aging process, primarily that of Joejoe's, but to some extent his own as well. You can't say that a whole lot really happens in the book, but there is a surprising beauty and emotional depth expressed in just taking each day as it comes. Though they all have mobile phones, the cross-generational closeness between characters and the simplicity of their daily activities evokes a sense of the past.
As an American, I found this book to be be an interesting insight to the Irish mind and lifestyle. The word "funny" is used multiple times on the back cover, and while I could recognize the humor in many of the situations, I typically found myself more bemused than amused at the daily goings on in the Feeney households. Just the matter-of-fact description of what they did for entertainment on a Saturday night I found both astounding and yet intriguing in its simplicity. The stream of consciousness style was at times disconcerting, especially in the lack of quotation marks, and since I'm not familiar with the culture I think it made me work a little harder to be sure I kept up with everything going on, but it was certainly effective at establishing a mood and a sense of connection to how Philip's feeling. The ending was expected, but I found myself surprised at how emotionally affected I was by it.
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