What do you think?
Rate this book
McNulty Family
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty
Old God's Time (March 2023), Sebastian Barry's stunning new novel, available to pre-order nowFollowing the end of the First World War, Eneas McNulty joins the British-led Royal Irish Constabulary. With all those around him becoming soldiers of a different kind, however, it proves to be the defining decision of his life when, having witnessed the murder of a fellow RIC policeman, he is wrongly accused of identifying the executioners. With a sentence of death passed over him he is forced to flee Sligo, his friends, family and beloved girl, Viv. What follows is the story of this flight, his subsequent wanderings, and the haunting pull of home that always afflicts him. Tender, witty, troubling and tragic, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty tells the secret history of a lost man.
324 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1998
492 people are currently reading
9486 people want to read
About the author
Sebastian Barry
51 books2,110 followersSebastian Barry is an Irish playwright, novelist and poet. He is noted for his dense literary writing style and is considered one of Ireland's finest writers
Barry's literary career began in poetry before he began writing plays and novels. In recent years his fiction writing has surpassed his work in the theatre in terms of success, having once been considered a playwright who wrote occasional novels.
He has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his novels A Long Long Way (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), the latter of which won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His 2011 novel On Canaan's Side was long-listed for the Booker. He won the Costa Book of the Year again - in 2017 for Days Without End.
Barry's literary career began in poetry before he began writing plays and novels. In recent years his fiction writing has surpassed his work in the theatre in terms of success, having once been considered a playwright who wrote occasional novels.
He has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his novels A Long Long Way (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), the latter of which won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His 2011 novel On Canaan's Side was long-listed for the Booker. He won the Costa Book of the Year again - in 2017 for Days Without End.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 376 reviews
February 4, 2019
I suspect I would have been more impressed with this if it were the first of Barry's novels I read. However, I've become well acquainted with his storytelling formulas and more critical. Firstly, I think he overdoes the lyricism in this novel, what I called in a review of another of his books, his grandiose biblical prose style. Secondly, his tendency to sentimentalise unlikely relationships is very much to the fore here. Thirdly, his central character, not for the first time, allows himself all too conveniently to be acted on by history with little punch or volition of his own.
Eneas McNulty alienates himself from his childhood world when he enlists in the British merchant navy and then makes matters far worse by joining the Royal Irish Constabulary, endorsing his community's belief that he is a British loyalist. His best friend, a member of the blossoming IRA, ignores him in the street and Eneas soon discovers his name is on a death list forcing him to leave Ireland. He works as a herring fisherman in the North Atlantic, joins the British army for WWII, then, after returning to Ireland and discovering his death sentence still stands, emigrates to Nigeria where he forms a friendship with a man who is in the same boat, a hunted enemy of purveyors of Nigerian independence. This was the section I least liked when Barry's sentimentality takes over. There follows an exciting section when he returns to Ireland. And I loved how this novel entered the world of another of his novels for a while (a precursor of David Mitchell's uber novel ambition) and gave us more detail about Roseanne, the central character of The Secret Scripture. I'd give it about 3.7 stars.
Eneas McNulty alienates himself from his childhood world when he enlists in the British merchant navy and then makes matters far worse by joining the Royal Irish Constabulary, endorsing his community's belief that he is a British loyalist. His best friend, a member of the blossoming IRA, ignores him in the street and Eneas soon discovers his name is on a death list forcing him to leave Ireland. He works as a herring fisherman in the North Atlantic, joins the British army for WWII, then, after returning to Ireland and discovering his death sentence still stands, emigrates to Nigeria where he forms a friendship with a man who is in the same boat, a hunted enemy of purveyors of Nigerian independence. This was the section I least liked when Barry's sentimentality takes over. There follows an exciting section when he returns to Ireland. And I loved how this novel entered the world of another of his novels for a while (a precursor of David Mitchell's uber novel ambition) and gave us more detail about Roseanne, the central character of The Secret Scripture. I'd give it about 3.7 stars.
March 27, 2022
"Eneas looks into the face of the killer and it has the set effort in it of a person struggling for precision in a world of Godless souls and wormy hearts."
Eneas McNulty - an ordinary man. A man who loves his country, the town of Sligo, his family. He is an ordinary man with ordinary goals: to live close to his family, to have a family of his own, to grow old in his homeland, simple goals easily attained, until they are not. The life of this humble young man is irreversibly changed when he seeks employment with the Irish Constabulary. This innocent act results in being marked for execution by the Irish revolutionaries. He becomes an enemy of Ireland. Through no fault of his own, his life is forever altered. An ordinary man exiled from all he loves, all he had dreamed of. An embittered man? Not Eneas McNulty. This ordinary man accepts the wayfarer's life, makes the best of an unfortunate turn of events.
Where can a man go if he can't go home? Eneas begins his forced odyssey in Galveston, Texas serving in the British Merchant Marines. Through two world wars, in France, England, and Africa his character shines through. A beautiful friendship with Harcourt, another exiled soul, brings some peace. "It seems to be the way for us both. A bit of happiness here and there. Throw out your leg now and the and be dancing. Otherwise, a crooked way." I was so hoping his luck would change, but it wasn't to be. A few brief trips back to Sligo to see his family reignited the death warrant. With his backpay earned as a veteran, he and Harcourt, now in their seventies, open a house for homeless men in the Isle of Dogs. With one noble act Eneas illustrates the ultimate meaning of friendship, of love, of being virtuous, of being anything but ordinary. Eneas McNulty is a man to be admired, an extraordinary man.
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is an unforgettable and moving story of goodness and evil, the fine line between a hero and a murderer, of life's cruel turns, and the ability we all may contain to accept what is not fair, to find contentment in small things and not turn bitter; to find peace. Sebastian Barry's writing is exquisite. The use of Irish dialect, although not always comprehended, only enhanced the lilt of the prose. This is an ode to life by an author who is the antithesis of an ordinary writer.
"Fear is an animal that lives in a man separately, and pokes its head out at will. No, it is that fear so long endured. The fear has become something else, could he dare call it strength, a privacy anyhow. A sort of privacy private to himself, a house with a private garden."
Eneas McNulty - an ordinary man. A man who loves his country, the town of Sligo, his family. He is an ordinary man with ordinary goals: to live close to his family, to have a family of his own, to grow old in his homeland, simple goals easily attained, until they are not. The life of this humble young man is irreversibly changed when he seeks employment with the Irish Constabulary. This innocent act results in being marked for execution by the Irish revolutionaries. He becomes an enemy of Ireland. Through no fault of his own, his life is forever altered. An ordinary man exiled from all he loves, all he had dreamed of. An embittered man? Not Eneas McNulty. This ordinary man accepts the wayfarer's life, makes the best of an unfortunate turn of events.
Where can a man go if he can't go home? Eneas begins his forced odyssey in Galveston, Texas serving in the British Merchant Marines. Through two world wars, in France, England, and Africa his character shines through. A beautiful friendship with Harcourt, another exiled soul, brings some peace. "It seems to be the way for us both. A bit of happiness here and there. Throw out your leg now and the and be dancing. Otherwise, a crooked way." I was so hoping his luck would change, but it wasn't to be. A few brief trips back to Sligo to see his family reignited the death warrant. With his backpay earned as a veteran, he and Harcourt, now in their seventies, open a house for homeless men in the Isle of Dogs. With one noble act Eneas illustrates the ultimate meaning of friendship, of love, of being virtuous, of being anything but ordinary. Eneas McNulty is a man to be admired, an extraordinary man.
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is an unforgettable and moving story of goodness and evil, the fine line between a hero and a murderer, of life's cruel turns, and the ability we all may contain to accept what is not fair, to find contentment in small things and not turn bitter; to find peace. Sebastian Barry's writing is exquisite. The use of Irish dialect, although not always comprehended, only enhanced the lilt of the prose. This is an ode to life by an author who is the antithesis of an ordinary writer.
"Fear is an animal that lives in a man separately, and pokes its head out at will. No, it is that fear so long endured. The fear has become something else, could he dare call it strength, a privacy anyhow. A sort of privacy private to himself, a house with a private garden."
February 21, 2019
Sebastian Barry is a conjurer, and he conjures up Ireland, the chaos of the Irish question and the impossibility of living an unpolitical life while suspended between the English and the IRA. Into this maelstrom he tosses Eneas McNulty, a quiet man who would like to live a simple life in Sligo, but who finds himself under the sentence of death by the rebel faction. Eneas lives his life in the shadow of this sentence, haunted by his memories and by nostalgic ties to a place he is barred from forever.
I am in awe of what Barry can do with the complex language that the rest of us sometimes struggle with. He is so fluid and supple, easy and graceful, that I felt I was swimming in a river of words that were pulling me along effortlessly. As in the case of this first kiss,
She takes his face in her hands like a farmer's wife lifting a swede in pride from the earth and plants her mouth on his and in the same moment sucks the life out of him and forces the life into him.
Or this passage that explains the passage of time in a way that I could easily relate to but felt I had never encountered before:
But by the grace of mere time itself or, sometimes, he thinks, the peculiar clock of God, whose divisions seem both unending and brief in the same span, he spends a decade and more at that work, in which to catch the cold fish and douse his brain with the solemn rainwater of stars. It is true that such work repeated and repeated, with its circles of journeys and seasons, weaves a pattern as simple as a country bedspread that gives the years the sensation of brevity.
Eneas McNulty is a very minor, passing, character in Barry’s The Secret Scripture, and when I realized there was a book featuring Eneas himself, I knew I wanted to read it. I did not actually expect it to meet the level of The Secret Scripture; I certainly never imagined it might exceed it. This book is among the most affecting books I have read in a long time. I felt the same outrage over the careless ruining of Eneas’ life as I had felt over the unfair incarceration of Roseanne. I drank the words on the page as if I had been served the finest wine, but in a homely coffee mug rather than a crystal goblet.
The story is wistful, plaintive and wholly memorable. It is about wide-ranging, societal questions, but it is also about the individual needs of the ordinary man. What does it mean to have a friend? How quickly does life pass us by and what is its worth if you are just one of the great unwashed?
How quick they come, how quick they go. Friendship. Oh, well. God sails his boats on the pond of the world and at fall of darkness goes off through the rubbed-out roses with the boats under his arms like a fabulous boy. The clock is the terrible high clouds fleeting to some unknown meeting. In the city encircling the park of the world lives are lived quickly, the admired baby soon the dreaming old bastard in the narrow suntrap under the less of the church. Quickly quickly everything goes.
I can attest that life goes more quickly than you can imagine in your youth. I believe it is the most human of all traits to look back at your life and wonder if it has had any impact upon the world or if you will be forgotten in the moment of your passing. And, I believe that one of the strongest pulls on any human being is the pull toward home.
Sebastian Barry has written a literary masterpiece.
I am in awe of what Barry can do with the complex language that the rest of us sometimes struggle with. He is so fluid and supple, easy and graceful, that I felt I was swimming in a river of words that were pulling me along effortlessly. As in the case of this first kiss,
She takes his face in her hands like a farmer's wife lifting a swede in pride from the earth and plants her mouth on his and in the same moment sucks the life out of him and forces the life into him.
Or this passage that explains the passage of time in a way that I could easily relate to but felt I had never encountered before:
But by the grace of mere time itself or, sometimes, he thinks, the peculiar clock of God, whose divisions seem both unending and brief in the same span, he spends a decade and more at that work, in which to catch the cold fish and douse his brain with the solemn rainwater of stars. It is true that such work repeated and repeated, with its circles of journeys and seasons, weaves a pattern as simple as a country bedspread that gives the years the sensation of brevity.
Eneas McNulty is a very minor, passing, character in Barry’s The Secret Scripture, and when I realized there was a book featuring Eneas himself, I knew I wanted to read it. I did not actually expect it to meet the level of The Secret Scripture; I certainly never imagined it might exceed it. This book is among the most affecting books I have read in a long time. I felt the same outrage over the careless ruining of Eneas’ life as I had felt over the unfair incarceration of Roseanne. I drank the words on the page as if I had been served the finest wine, but in a homely coffee mug rather than a crystal goblet.
The story is wistful, plaintive and wholly memorable. It is about wide-ranging, societal questions, but it is also about the individual needs of the ordinary man. What does it mean to have a friend? How quickly does life pass us by and what is its worth if you are just one of the great unwashed?
How quick they come, how quick they go. Friendship. Oh, well. God sails his boats on the pond of the world and at fall of darkness goes off through the rubbed-out roses with the boats under his arms like a fabulous boy. The clock is the terrible high clouds fleeting to some unknown meeting. In the city encircling the park of the world lives are lived quickly, the admired baby soon the dreaming old bastard in the narrow suntrap under the less of the church. Quickly quickly everything goes.
I can attest that life goes more quickly than you can imagine in your youth. I believe it is the most human of all traits to look back at your life and wonder if it has had any impact upon the world or if you will be forgotten in the moment of your passing. And, I believe that one of the strongest pulls on any human being is the pull toward home.
Sebastian Barry has written a literary masterpiece.
June 5, 2016
Sure and it's the voice that does it here, takes you by the hand and worrits you away to lands beyond the sea and a life lived headless and heedless of consequences. That Eneas fellah, he's a great chap, you know, a grand lad, but you cannae deny, if his brains were dynamite he wouldnae be able to blow his own hat off. What's he doing taking a job with the feckin' Royal Irish Constabulary? Would you not know that that was bound to end badly? Sure enough. Sure enough.
Aye.
Aye.
October 30, 2016
I can think of no better review for this book than Bruce Springsteen's Something In The Night for it is, truly, Eneas McNulty's life, from beginning to end.
....
You're born with nothing,
and better off that way,
Soon as you've got something they send
someone to try and take it away,
You can ride this road 'till dawn,
without another human being in sight,
Just kids wasted on
something in the night.
Nothing is forgotten or forgiven,
when it's your last time around,
I got stuff running 'round my head
That I just can't live down.
When we found the things we loved,
They were crushed and dying in the dirt.
We tried to pick up the pieces,
And get away without getting hurt,
But they caught us at the state line,
And burned our cars in one last fight,
And left us running burned and blind,
Chasing something in the night.
This novel devastates me in the same way this song always has: to ever be a wanderer in this world, by nature of birth, of accident, of fate. And to know that every mistake, no matter how small or insignificant will always count against you, even to yourself. Not only does the world not forgive, but you can't begin to forgive yourself.
... nothing is forgotten or forgiven, when it's your last time around ...
Even if you're not a Springsteen fan, do yourself a favour and listen to this version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oaGs...
....
You're born with nothing,
and better off that way,
Soon as you've got something they send
someone to try and take it away,
You can ride this road 'till dawn,
without another human being in sight,
Just kids wasted on
something in the night.
Nothing is forgotten or forgiven,
when it's your last time around,
I got stuff running 'round my head
That I just can't live down.
When we found the things we loved,
They were crushed and dying in the dirt.
We tried to pick up the pieces,
And get away without getting hurt,
But they caught us at the state line,
And burned our cars in one last fight,
And left us running burned and blind,
Chasing something in the night.
This novel devastates me in the same way this song always has: to ever be a wanderer in this world, by nature of birth, of accident, of fate. And to know that every mistake, no matter how small or insignificant will always count against you, even to yourself. Not only does the world not forgive, but you can't begin to forgive yourself.
... nothing is forgotten or forgiven, when it's your last time around ...
Even if you're not a Springsteen fan, do yourself a favour and listen to this version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oaGs...
October 8, 2019
A beautifully written book that seems as if it could only be about an Irishman, a man from a divided area who through no fault of his own is put on a 'side,' yet the particulars of time and place are transcended by universal themes: the call of home and family; true friendship; loneliness (the raw, pure, hurting kind); and one's place in the world and beyond the world.
Paradoxically, seeing Irish history through the eyes of this naive, confused, apolitical man helped me understand its complexity more than any other book or movie I've read or seen on the subject.
Paradoxically, seeing Irish history through the eyes of this naive, confused, apolitical man helped me understand its complexity more than any other book or movie I've read or seen on the subject.
June 3, 2021
“And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” – Revelations, Ch. 20, v. 15, quoted in The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty
So, having a bad day, are you? Well, let me tell you about Eneas McNulty. By my calculation, he had about fifty years of bad days, some worse than others, but only a very, very few that could be placed in the “good” category.
And it wasn’t his fault.
He was an innocent, compassionate, and morally upright man who through no fault of his own was dealt a bad hand and who spent most of his adult life struggling to play it the best he could. He was a man of good intentions, but he could never escape the entangling historical events that combined to overwhelm and perplex him and transform his life into a tenuous and potentially lethal existence.
Eneas’ problems began when he returned home to Ireland after serving in the British Merchant Navy during WWI. He soon discovered that “the war finishing was only a signal to the hidden men of Ireland to brew their own war,” a civil war for independence from the British crown, led by the Irish Republican Army.
Besides the violence and political turmoil, Ireland was also experiencing an economic depression and jobs were hard to come by. As Eneas searched for employment without any success his father suggested that he join the Royal Irish Constabulary, which was the English-led police force.
In the guerilla war and violent reprisals by both sides that inflamed passions in divided Ireland the policemen became targets. And though Eneas was apolitical and only took the job in order to get on with his daily life, he became a marked man. His name went on a blacklist and the IRA issued a death threat against him.
His only recourse was to become a wandering man without a country, one who was forced to forsake his homeland and drift from nation to nation.
Besides being a critically-acclaimed novelist, Sebastian Barry is a talented playwright and as many passages sprinkled throughout his prose demonstrate, he is also a gifted poet.
For example:
Thank you, Teresa, for guiding me to this book as well as Barry’s WWI novel, A Long Long Way.
So, having a bad day, are you? Well, let me tell you about Eneas McNulty. By my calculation, he had about fifty years of bad days, some worse than others, but only a very, very few that could be placed in the “good” category.
And it wasn’t his fault.
He was an innocent, compassionate, and morally upright man who through no fault of his own was dealt a bad hand and who spent most of his adult life struggling to play it the best he could. He was a man of good intentions, but he could never escape the entangling historical events that combined to overwhelm and perplex him and transform his life into a tenuous and potentially lethal existence.
Eneas’ problems began when he returned home to Ireland after serving in the British Merchant Navy during WWI. He soon discovered that “the war finishing was only a signal to the hidden men of Ireland to brew their own war,” a civil war for independence from the British crown, led by the Irish Republican Army.
Besides the violence and political turmoil, Ireland was also experiencing an economic depression and jobs were hard to come by. As Eneas searched for employment without any success his father suggested that he join the Royal Irish Constabulary, which was the English-led police force.
In the guerilla war and violent reprisals by both sides that inflamed passions in divided Ireland the policemen became targets. And though Eneas was apolitical and only took the job in order to get on with his daily life, he became a marked man. His name went on a blacklist and the IRA issued a death threat against him.
His only recourse was to become a wandering man without a country, one who was forced to forsake his homeland and drift from nation to nation.
Besides being a critically-acclaimed novelist, Sebastian Barry is a talented playwright and as many passages sprinkled throughout his prose demonstrate, he is also a gifted poet.
For example:
How quick they come, how quick they go. Friendship. Oh, well. God sails his boats on the pond of the world and at fall of darkness goes off through the rubbed-out roses with the boats under his arms like a fabulous boy. The clock is the terrible high clouds fleeting to some unknown meeting. In the city encircling the park of the world lives are lived quickly, the admired baby soon the dreaming old bastard in the narrow suntrap under the lee of the church. Quickly quickly everything goes.
Thank you, Teresa, for guiding me to this book as well as Barry’s WWI novel, A Long Long Way.
March 31, 2021
3,5*
#TheIrishReadathon
“Quem fala debaixo das pedras senão lesmas e gorgulhos? Eu, o jardineiro, devo saber que é assim! Não te importes, filho, não dês importância ao que ouves, aos murmúrios de uma cidade pequena, aos cochichos de Sligo. Algumas palavras não têm musicalidade alguma – diz Tom com a sabedoria de um músico atrás das suas palavras, na inegável melancolia.
Tal como um Eneias do século XX, também Eneas McNulty tem de deixar a sua terra-natal e dá por si a vaguear durante décadas de um lado para o outro, não para encontrar uma nova pátria, visto que continua a ansiar pela Irlanda até ao fim, mas até chegar ao seu destino final, não tão glorioso como o do herói da mitologia.
Sendo um jovem apolítico, com o único propósito de arranjar um meio de subsistência, depois de estar embarcadiço na Marinha Mercante Britânica, Eneas ingressa na Polícia e torna-se um alvo a abater para os irlandeses rebeldes que lutam pela independência. Sebastian Barry exprime muito bem o que é ser-se um desterrado, um homem extremamente solitário, sem família nem rumo, sempre a suspirar pela sua Sligo, onde deixou todos aqueles com quem algum dia se relacionou. “A História de Eneas” acompanha um homem de quem é fácil condoermo-nos e relata com muita emoção momentos da História extremamente decisivos como a criação da República da Irlanda e a batalha de Dunquerque, porém, recorre a um estilo por vezes tão rebuscado, que o lirismo assume o controlo da narrativa, sobretudo no término da obra, dando-lhe um final que, para mim, foi insatisfatório.
“As almas dos seus amigos pousam no seu rosto e no seu peito como pombos, parecem clamar pela sua atenção, coisa que não lhe agrada nada. Ao mesmo tempo, porém, abre veemente os braços e arrasta as almas para perto de si, para as nutrir e se nutrir, uma manta de almas. O céu nocturno, há momentos tão tranquilo, tão azul, está salpicado de rostos dourados que tagarelam com ele, falam alto, como viajantes numa grande estação.
#TheIrishReadathon
“Quem fala debaixo das pedras senão lesmas e gorgulhos? Eu, o jardineiro, devo saber que é assim! Não te importes, filho, não dês importância ao que ouves, aos murmúrios de uma cidade pequena, aos cochichos de Sligo. Algumas palavras não têm musicalidade alguma – diz Tom com a sabedoria de um músico atrás das suas palavras, na inegável melancolia.
Tal como um Eneias do século XX, também Eneas McNulty tem de deixar a sua terra-natal e dá por si a vaguear durante décadas de um lado para o outro, não para encontrar uma nova pátria, visto que continua a ansiar pela Irlanda até ao fim, mas até chegar ao seu destino final, não tão glorioso como o do herói da mitologia.
Sendo um jovem apolítico, com o único propósito de arranjar um meio de subsistência, depois de estar embarcadiço na Marinha Mercante Britânica, Eneas ingressa na Polícia e torna-se um alvo a abater para os irlandeses rebeldes que lutam pela independência. Sebastian Barry exprime muito bem o que é ser-se um desterrado, um homem extremamente solitário, sem família nem rumo, sempre a suspirar pela sua Sligo, onde deixou todos aqueles com quem algum dia se relacionou. “A História de Eneas” acompanha um homem de quem é fácil condoermo-nos e relata com muita emoção momentos da História extremamente decisivos como a criação da República da Irlanda e a batalha de Dunquerque, porém, recorre a um estilo por vezes tão rebuscado, que o lirismo assume o controlo da narrativa, sobretudo no término da obra, dando-lhe um final que, para mim, foi insatisfatório.
“As almas dos seus amigos pousam no seu rosto e no seu peito como pombos, parecem clamar pela sua atenção, coisa que não lhe agrada nada. Ao mesmo tempo, porém, abre veemente os braços e arrasta as almas para perto de si, para as nutrir e se nutrir, uma manta de almas. O céu nocturno, há momentos tão tranquilo, tão azul, está salpicado de rostos dourados que tagarelam com ele, falam alto, como viajantes numa grande estação.
January 20, 2013
The whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry is the fourth book by Sebastian Barry that I have read.
Following the end of the First World War, Eneas McNulty joins the British-led Royal Irish Constabulary. With all those around him becoming soldiers of a different kind, it proves to be the defining decision of his life when having witnessed the further of a fellow RIC Policeman he is wrongly accused of identifying the executioners. With a sentence of death passed over him he is forced to flee Sligo, his family and friends.
The writing is wonderful and vibrant and his use of elegant prose while beautiful becomes a little overpowering as I felt the plot lost out to the prose in certain paragraphs.
I did enjoy the characters and while I found sections of the story moving and exciting I thought the author failed to elaborate and take advantage of the readers interest and emotions in these situations and I was left wanting.
If I had not been up to date on Irish history I would have been quite lost reading this novel.
There are similarities between the whereabouts of Eneas McNulty and The Secret Scripture. The Character of Roseanne comes into play in both novels which I really found intriguing.
I really loved Barry's The Secret Scriptureand one of favourite books by this author is A Long Long Way a novel that has all the elements of great historical fiction as the writing is superb and the historical content and plot are excellent.
The whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is a worthwhile read but pales in comparision with the authors other novels.
Following the end of the First World War, Eneas McNulty joins the British-led Royal Irish Constabulary. With all those around him becoming soldiers of a different kind, it proves to be the defining decision of his life when having witnessed the further of a fellow RIC Policeman he is wrongly accused of identifying the executioners. With a sentence of death passed over him he is forced to flee Sligo, his family and friends.
The writing is wonderful and vibrant and his use of elegant prose while beautiful becomes a little overpowering as I felt the plot lost out to the prose in certain paragraphs.
I did enjoy the characters and while I found sections of the story moving and exciting I thought the author failed to elaborate and take advantage of the readers interest and emotions in these situations and I was left wanting.
If I had not been up to date on Irish history I would have been quite lost reading this novel.
There are similarities between the whereabouts of Eneas McNulty and The Secret Scripture. The Character of Roseanne comes into play in both novels which I really found intriguing.
I really loved Barry's The Secret Scriptureand one of favourite books by this author is A Long Long Way a novel that has all the elements of great historical fiction as the writing is superb and the historical content and plot are excellent.
The whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is a worthwhile read but pales in comparision with the authors other novels.
January 18, 2015
Really enjoyed this book in lots of different ways.
I think I have read most of Sebastian Barry's books
and liked them all.
His prose is really almost poetic at times.
I found myself re-reading a lot of sentences as they
were so beautifully put together.
Also his characters talk in the accent or voice of the
people of Sligo in the West of Ireland which is nearly
musical at times.
The historical times the story is set in is during the
Easter Rising,The Irish Civil War and the First World
War.The author really brings the history alive and
it is very moving and emotive.
I wish in school instead of reading dry history books
about these time we could have read Sebastian Barry's
books.
Highly recommend this book!
I think I have read most of Sebastian Barry's books
and liked them all.
His prose is really almost poetic at times.
I found myself re-reading a lot of sentences as they
were so beautifully put together.
Also his characters talk in the accent or voice of the
people of Sligo in the West of Ireland which is nearly
musical at times.
The historical times the story is set in is during the
Easter Rising,The Irish Civil War and the First World
War.The author really brings the history alive and
it is very moving and emotive.
I wish in school instead of reading dry history books
about these time we could have read Sebastian Barry's
books.
Highly recommend this book!
June 22, 2022
This novel has a single protagonist who we follow throughout his adult life. At the end of World War One he joins the Royal Irish Constabulary. Before long he is on an IRA death list and has to flee Ireland and leave behind his family and girlfriend. His homeless wanderings take him to France, America and Nigeria. I have to say I preferred the parts set in Ireland. When he's lost in the world the novel too seems sometimes on the verge of losing itself. It's written in very poetic language and on the whole a very fine novel.
June 30, 2019
The reader is drawn into the unique thinking of Eneas McNulty with great sympathy throughout this tale of his life in Sligo and his life away from its menacing threat. It is something of a torturous read but rewarding emotionally. To preserve his life, Eneas is drawn far and wide and ends up having a far more varied and accomplished life than the Sligo men who threaten him.
November 24, 2019
This author is fast becoming one of my favorites. This is known when I finish a book and immediately start looking for his others. Likely I will consume his repertoire, starting at the beginning. This is the second I’ve read (after The Secret Scripture), both volumes bought at DuBray books on Graffton street in Dublin. I travel there every year or two for work and have fallen in love with the city, the people, Ireland and the whole experience. It is a city of authors, if you’ve never been, and a walkable, small city with enormous charm. We have so many immigrants in American (including some of my far back relatives), that our country’s kinship has always felt tight, especially here in the Midwest where we are known to be friendly, working class, and industrious. I’ve been fascinated with the “troubles” of Ireland since a boy, and there is a vast (and brilliant) literature. The verbal and literary dexterity of the Irish, like their musical talents, I find thrilling.
This book for me contained all the elements of greatness: Authenticity, historical accuracy, an interesting narrative, a real time and place, and great dialogue. The protagonist, Eneas, was so dear to me that I felt his joys, his pains, his regret and (ultimately) his redemption. Like Faulkner, the author has created a world in a time and place, the port city of Sligo. I’m assuming this because both of his books that I’ve read were set there. Both also span a lifetime or two, and the issues in Ireland are neatly explained in a way that history books could not. (my friends tire of my sermon that great fiction is a superior way to really learn history) We find Eneas as a happy, carefree and modestly poor lad. The first child of his parents (his mother of dubious origin – we find later she was orphaned by her father after her mother died – oddly that was shameful in those times), Eneas enjoys the attention and is a dutiful son. He encounters a real orphan, the troubled but interesting Jonno, as they steal apples from the rector’s orchard. Soon other siblings come along, and a young man’s wanderlust and the crowding of home life, lead Eneas to join the british army with stationing in Galveston’s harbor in the US. His eyes are opened to the sailor life and its follies, and he enjoys this new freedom. But it turns out to have been a fateful, perhaps foolish, decision – since this is in the early 20th century and the first big war is upon the world, coincidentally with a ferment of revolt of Irish independence. By joining the “royal” or british fleet, he as shown fealty to the crown, and the Irish revolutionaries will never let him forget it, including his friend Jonno, who by now is active. Returning after WWI, the jobs in Ireland are few and he joins the Irish police force in a small town just to draw a paycheck, another fateful decision because he is now marked by the revolutionaries as truly disloyal – plus he sees the nightly nightmarish aftermath of reprisal and reprisals (I myself finally understand the “black and tans”). Ultimately he is a marked man and must leave Sligo, even Ireland, upon penalty of death. His friendship with his best pal Jonno is shattered, and he begins his wandering. Eventually he joins the English army and finds himself on the beach at Dunkirk and is destroyed by what we now know is PTSD. He tries to return home, is turned out, threatened, and wanders again. Ireland has finally achieved independence but he is a man without a country.
The story is tragic, I have rarely felt such sympathy for a character, who’s few loves were taken from him. The author writes beautifully of the land and the weather and the emotional toil that animates our protagonist. Eventually he finds himself with spade in hand digging a canal in the desert of Nigeria. There he finds a fellow traveler, Harcourt, a black man with English training, and they become lifelong friends. Eventually they are both driven out of Lagos, due to yet more revolutionaries throwing off British rule. They find themselves on the lonely Isle of Dogs where old broken down sailors go to retire in a bleak landscape. Eneas finds a measure of serenity there, and his demons bubble up less often. He is a kind man, and good to his friends and family, but he is totally consumed with regret and overwhelming memories of his family and home. By a stroke of luck he discovers he has a back pension from his war service, and this keeps him and his companion (Harcourt) alive. The end of the story was not perfect, but I this is a new favorite because of the certainty I have that this is true to history and Ireland. Mostly, though, the lilting dialogue and unique turns of phrase are brilliant and true as iron.
Here are some snippets, but I suggest you just read it;
p. 58: “They are half nightmare themselves, in their uniforms patched together from army and Ric stores, some of them handsome and elegant men, with shining accents, some terrible dark boys from the worse and drear back-alleys of England, but all with the blank light of dead and drear unimportance of being alive in their eyes. As ancient as old stories. And every auxiliary has the strength of four ordinary men you would think, as if death and fearlessness were an elixir.”
p. 71: “He doesn’t know if anyone has succeeded, before execution, in being taken off a black list, but then the history of Sligo is not the history of great escapes. They are more doomed and fixed in their courses, the men of Sligo, it seems to him, than those bewildered and doomed Greeks of old that the master used to relish.”
p. 178: “The room is peculiarly bare like a policeman’s, with a desk frothing with wooden carvings at the edges, and a veritable heap of papers and dossiers and files and pens and calendars quite neatly stacked and arranged. Behind the mound of important work sits his little brother, a red faced person with a lot of healthy looking fat on his face and hands. The backs of his hands are like a turkey’s legs. The hair is black as an octopus’ ink and in the black suit his brother Tom seems compact and perfect, like a painted advertisement in the station. He looks like he owns a brushed hat and a new hat anyway, he looks like he knows his way about the alleys and lanes of official things, content, secure, with a gold watch on top everything, solid on his thick wrist. He gives a huge impression of likeability and humanity, and indeed he gets up from his labours and floods about the big table and just embraces Eneas like the brother he is.”
p. 224: “The days of letters are well gone now, and the only touch he has now against his mother must be in dreams, and truth to tell his dreams are poor things really and he has a contempt for them. But now and then some nights she flits through in strange guises, whether as the avenging crone of old dreams, or the bright flame of an aisling that he has no need of, and rises unbidden from the paltry bog of his sleeping brain. He knows that she and all her world will die, and her secrets too, and he knows that all traces of even his own days will be pulled from the streets of Sligo, and the names of the shops will change again, and someone’s premises here and others there will suffer the great iron ball, and he knows that in that sense he is already dead, that time has already taken care of him. There is the living breathing world of Ireland with De Valera and the sons of powerful men taking power as they come to age. Its all the old story over again except this time the rich man is themselves in a motorcar and a house on a respectable road. Well, he must not worry about politics, he’s beyond them now. He has never been for politics, only the flotsam of its minor storms.”
p. 228: “Fear afflicts him, silence abets the fear. Sometimes he lays down his spade and shivers in the lengthening ditch, he shivers like an auge like malaria, but it isn’t so simple. It isn’t mosquitos are ruining Eneas, but the pressing down and piercing up of a life. He’s being run through from many an angle. Sometimes he years for the refuge of an English madhouse, for the refuge of youth even, of a fresh start. He is mortally exhausted sometimes by being this Eneas McNulty. The wicked idea strikes him that his would be murderers- would be in the right, that there’s nothing to recommend him, that his life has been ill led, that he deserves tremendous and afflicting punishment. When he thinks this he trembles worse. He’s lost in a childhood state and he fears the displeasure of god the king of good and the demon of evil. He lies fast in the bed of himself with the starched sheets binding his legs, and the ministers of god approach the bedroom of himself and will be in the window like a fiery bold to accuse and torment him and he feels it will be well merited.
The discovery of this author for me, was from a proprietor of the little store in Dublin. Simply asking for a ‘serious’ less-known author from Ireland yielded me this amazing author. Thank you, Sebastian Barry, for enriching my life and providing profound and life-changing entertainment. For me, that’s art.
This book for me contained all the elements of greatness: Authenticity, historical accuracy, an interesting narrative, a real time and place, and great dialogue. The protagonist, Eneas, was so dear to me that I felt his joys, his pains, his regret and (ultimately) his redemption. Like Faulkner, the author has created a world in a time and place, the port city of Sligo. I’m assuming this because both of his books that I’ve read were set there. Both also span a lifetime or two, and the issues in Ireland are neatly explained in a way that history books could not. (my friends tire of my sermon that great fiction is a superior way to really learn history) We find Eneas as a happy, carefree and modestly poor lad. The first child of his parents (his mother of dubious origin – we find later she was orphaned by her father after her mother died – oddly that was shameful in those times), Eneas enjoys the attention and is a dutiful son. He encounters a real orphan, the troubled but interesting Jonno, as they steal apples from the rector’s orchard. Soon other siblings come along, and a young man’s wanderlust and the crowding of home life, lead Eneas to join the british army with stationing in Galveston’s harbor in the US. His eyes are opened to the sailor life and its follies, and he enjoys this new freedom. But it turns out to have been a fateful, perhaps foolish, decision – since this is in the early 20th century and the first big war is upon the world, coincidentally with a ferment of revolt of Irish independence. By joining the “royal” or british fleet, he as shown fealty to the crown, and the Irish revolutionaries will never let him forget it, including his friend Jonno, who by now is active. Returning after WWI, the jobs in Ireland are few and he joins the Irish police force in a small town just to draw a paycheck, another fateful decision because he is now marked by the revolutionaries as truly disloyal – plus he sees the nightly nightmarish aftermath of reprisal and reprisals (I myself finally understand the “black and tans”). Ultimately he is a marked man and must leave Sligo, even Ireland, upon penalty of death. His friendship with his best pal Jonno is shattered, and he begins his wandering. Eventually he joins the English army and finds himself on the beach at Dunkirk and is destroyed by what we now know is PTSD. He tries to return home, is turned out, threatened, and wanders again. Ireland has finally achieved independence but he is a man without a country.
The story is tragic, I have rarely felt such sympathy for a character, who’s few loves were taken from him. The author writes beautifully of the land and the weather and the emotional toil that animates our protagonist. Eventually he finds himself with spade in hand digging a canal in the desert of Nigeria. There he finds a fellow traveler, Harcourt, a black man with English training, and they become lifelong friends. Eventually they are both driven out of Lagos, due to yet more revolutionaries throwing off British rule. They find themselves on the lonely Isle of Dogs where old broken down sailors go to retire in a bleak landscape. Eneas finds a measure of serenity there, and his demons bubble up less often. He is a kind man, and good to his friends and family, but he is totally consumed with regret and overwhelming memories of his family and home. By a stroke of luck he discovers he has a back pension from his war service, and this keeps him and his companion (Harcourt) alive. The end of the story was not perfect, but I this is a new favorite because of the certainty I have that this is true to history and Ireland. Mostly, though, the lilting dialogue and unique turns of phrase are brilliant and true as iron.
Here are some snippets, but I suggest you just read it;
p. 58: “They are half nightmare themselves, in their uniforms patched together from army and Ric stores, some of them handsome and elegant men, with shining accents, some terrible dark boys from the worse and drear back-alleys of England, but all with the blank light of dead and drear unimportance of being alive in their eyes. As ancient as old stories. And every auxiliary has the strength of four ordinary men you would think, as if death and fearlessness were an elixir.”
p. 71: “He doesn’t know if anyone has succeeded, before execution, in being taken off a black list, but then the history of Sligo is not the history of great escapes. They are more doomed and fixed in their courses, the men of Sligo, it seems to him, than those bewildered and doomed Greeks of old that the master used to relish.”
p. 178: “The room is peculiarly bare like a policeman’s, with a desk frothing with wooden carvings at the edges, and a veritable heap of papers and dossiers and files and pens and calendars quite neatly stacked and arranged. Behind the mound of important work sits his little brother, a red faced person with a lot of healthy looking fat on his face and hands. The backs of his hands are like a turkey’s legs. The hair is black as an octopus’ ink and in the black suit his brother Tom seems compact and perfect, like a painted advertisement in the station. He looks like he owns a brushed hat and a new hat anyway, he looks like he knows his way about the alleys and lanes of official things, content, secure, with a gold watch on top everything, solid on his thick wrist. He gives a huge impression of likeability and humanity, and indeed he gets up from his labours and floods about the big table and just embraces Eneas like the brother he is.”
p. 224: “The days of letters are well gone now, and the only touch he has now against his mother must be in dreams, and truth to tell his dreams are poor things really and he has a contempt for them. But now and then some nights she flits through in strange guises, whether as the avenging crone of old dreams, or the bright flame of an aisling that he has no need of, and rises unbidden from the paltry bog of his sleeping brain. He knows that she and all her world will die, and her secrets too, and he knows that all traces of even his own days will be pulled from the streets of Sligo, and the names of the shops will change again, and someone’s premises here and others there will suffer the great iron ball, and he knows that in that sense he is already dead, that time has already taken care of him. There is the living breathing world of Ireland with De Valera and the sons of powerful men taking power as they come to age. Its all the old story over again except this time the rich man is themselves in a motorcar and a house on a respectable road. Well, he must not worry about politics, he’s beyond them now. He has never been for politics, only the flotsam of its minor storms.”
p. 228: “Fear afflicts him, silence abets the fear. Sometimes he lays down his spade and shivers in the lengthening ditch, he shivers like an auge like malaria, but it isn’t so simple. It isn’t mosquitos are ruining Eneas, but the pressing down and piercing up of a life. He’s being run through from many an angle. Sometimes he years for the refuge of an English madhouse, for the refuge of youth even, of a fresh start. He is mortally exhausted sometimes by being this Eneas McNulty. The wicked idea strikes him that his would be murderers- would be in the right, that there’s nothing to recommend him, that his life has been ill led, that he deserves tremendous and afflicting punishment. When he thinks this he trembles worse. He’s lost in a childhood state and he fears the displeasure of god the king of good and the demon of evil. He lies fast in the bed of himself with the starched sheets binding his legs, and the ministers of god approach the bedroom of himself and will be in the window like a fiery bold to accuse and torment him and he feels it will be well merited.
The discovery of this author for me, was from a proprietor of the little store in Dublin. Simply asking for a ‘serious’ less-known author from Ireland yielded me this amazing author. Thank you, Sebastian Barry, for enriching my life and providing profound and life-changing entertainment. For me, that’s art.
April 2, 2022
If I could award ten stars for this book, I would do it. It is so beautifully written that it lures you in and keeps you reading. It is a story told from a different perspective than I have ever considered but at the same time, it is the story of someone for whom life has dealt a terribly hard hand. Eneas is an innocent from Sligo trying to make his way in the world who ends up getting a job in the Royal Irish Constabulary because there were no other jobs to be had after WWI. By doing so, he becomes a target of the local IRA who have now blacklisted him and ordered him out of Ireland. He asks them how he can get off that list and is told that to do that he would have to kill the Chief of the RIC. He tells them he cannot and is forced out of the country. He returns a few times in the course of his life only to find that his life is still under threat and that he must go. To stay means that he will be killed.
This is the story of an innocent man whose whole ambition is to live in Sligo, have a wife and children, and find happiness but he is never allowed to do this. In the end, he finds redemption, if that is the word. I do not want to give too much away and would prefer people not to judge the book by my poor review. If you decide to read this amazing book, make sure to have plenty of tissue unhand.
This is the story of an innocent man whose whole ambition is to live in Sligo, have a wife and children, and find happiness but he is never allowed to do this. In the end, he finds redemption, if that is the word. I do not want to give too much away and would prefer people not to judge the book by my poor review. If you decide to read this amazing book, make sure to have plenty of tissue unhand.
April 2, 2021
Esta foi a terceira obra que li de Sebastian Barry e foi a que menos me agradou.
Tem ingredientes que me fizeram sublinhar imensas passagens, a contextualização histórica e espacial interessam-me imenso, é a obra que faz a ligação entre as outras que li do autor - Escritos Secretos e Dias sem fim - porém tem uma trama que se arrasta (quiçá propositadamente), personagens que ficam perdidas nas páginas e que deveriam ser mais aprofundadas e um final rebuscado e desnecessário.
Se ainda não leram Barry, recomendo que não comecem por este. Que leiam Dias sem fim ou sobretudo Escritos Secretos.
NOTA - 6,5/10
Obrigada, Paulinha, pela companhia em mais uma viagem!
PS - Não é coincidência o facto de este protagonista ter o mesmo nome que o intemporal Eneias, da Eneida de Virgílio. Até eu, que quero pôr para trás das costas as aulas de Cultura Clássica, entendo isso.
Tem ingredientes que me fizeram sublinhar imensas passagens, a contextualização histórica e espacial interessam-me imenso, é a obra que faz a ligação entre as outras que li do autor - Escritos Secretos e Dias sem fim - porém tem uma trama que se arrasta (quiçá propositadamente), personagens que ficam perdidas nas páginas e que deveriam ser mais aprofundadas e um final rebuscado e desnecessário.
Se ainda não leram Barry, recomendo que não comecem por este. Que leiam Dias sem fim ou sobretudo Escritos Secretos.
NOTA - 6,5/10
Obrigada, Paulinha, pela companhia em mais uma viagem!
PS - Não é coincidência o facto de este protagonista ter o mesmo nome que o intemporal Eneias, da Eneida de Virgílio. Até eu, que quero pôr para trás das costas as aulas de Cultura Clássica, entendo isso.
July 31, 2018
Wieder ein ganzes Leben, das uns hier erzählt wird, wie bereits in Ein verborgenes Leben. Wobei der Roman Eneas McNulty zuerst erschien, ich ihn aber als zweiten Roman von Barry las.
Und doch so ganz anders. Während Ein verborgenes Leben zwar äußerst lesenswert und lesbar ist – ein echter Pageturner – handelt es sich dort doch um eine recht einfach erzählte Geschichte, inklusive unnötig unrealistischer, früh durchschaubarer Verwicklungen und leichter Tendenz zum Kitsch.
Hier fiel mir der Einstieg etwas schwerer, da nicht so einfach, süffig geschrieben. Auch weniger vom Plot getrieben. Dabei kann man nicht sagen, dass nicht viel passiert. Der Protagonist kommt weit rum, ist Soldat in beiden Weltkriegen, sieht den Süden der Vereinigten Staaten, arbeitet in französischen Weinbergen, hebt Gräben in Nigeria aus. Doch sehen wir die Welt immer durch seine Augen und sein Blick ist ein sehr sensibler, oft melancholischer – und spätestens als er durch die Wirren der irischen Konflikte stets um sein Leben fürchtet – zunehmend einsam.
Barry findet für diese Einsamkeit, die Verletzungen durch den Krieg, die Fremdheit wunderbare Bilder. Die Sprache ist ausnehmend poetisch. Und es beeindruckt mich, wie er für diese Figur so eine ganz andere Sprache als für Roseanne in dem oben genannten Roman findet.
Apropos Roseanne: Die Begegnung zwischen den beiden, die bereits in Ein verborgenes Leben geschildert wurde, lesen wir hier mit Eneas Blick. Diese Querverbindungen zwischen den Romanen machen neugierig auf mehr.
Außerdem hat mich der Roman zum Filmegucken angeregt: Michael Collins möchte ich nach dieser Lektüre wiedersehen und vielleicht auch Dunkirchen, denn dort war auch Eneas im Einsatz.
Und doch so ganz anders. Während Ein verborgenes Leben zwar äußerst lesenswert und lesbar ist – ein echter Pageturner – handelt es sich dort doch um eine recht einfach erzählte Geschichte, inklusive unnötig unrealistischer, früh durchschaubarer Verwicklungen und leichter Tendenz zum Kitsch.
Hier fiel mir der Einstieg etwas schwerer, da nicht so einfach, süffig geschrieben. Auch weniger vom Plot getrieben. Dabei kann man nicht sagen, dass nicht viel passiert. Der Protagonist kommt weit rum, ist Soldat in beiden Weltkriegen, sieht den Süden der Vereinigten Staaten, arbeitet in französischen Weinbergen, hebt Gräben in Nigeria aus. Doch sehen wir die Welt immer durch seine Augen und sein Blick ist ein sehr sensibler, oft melancholischer – und spätestens als er durch die Wirren der irischen Konflikte stets um sein Leben fürchtet – zunehmend einsam.
Barry findet für diese Einsamkeit, die Verletzungen durch den Krieg, die Fremdheit wunderbare Bilder. Die Sprache ist ausnehmend poetisch. Und es beeindruckt mich, wie er für diese Figur so eine ganz andere Sprache als für Roseanne in dem oben genannten Roman findet.
Apropos Roseanne: Die Begegnung zwischen den beiden, die bereits in Ein verborgenes Leben geschildert wurde, lesen wir hier mit Eneas Blick. Diese Querverbindungen zwischen den Romanen machen neugierig auf mehr.
Außerdem hat mich der Roman zum Filmegucken angeregt: Michael Collins möchte ich nach dieser Lektüre wiedersehen und vielleicht auch Dunkirchen, denn dort war auch Eneas im Einsatz.
Want to read
January 17, 2025Recommended by Old Man and the Read in the video Best 77 books I've read over the past 77 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zYZC...
August 2, 2014
I would love to give this book a higher rating based on some of the prose. The writing can be lovely, with moments of description that are well done - but the entire book is bogged down in the author's desire to be poetic. The story is lost in all "those words" as it becomes more about long drawn out paragraphs and no motion to the story and then a sudden burst forward - then back to long, never ending sentences.... A fan of this period in history or of this place may look past all of that, enjoy the droning of words upon words - but my personal preference is one in which the story moves and I care about - and understand - the character and his choices. There were a few moments of "oh great! story!" and they showed great potential to be interesting so I think that there is a good story underneath all the miscellaneous chatter - as nice as it may be.
October 9, 2023
The writing is worth five stars on its own, but the story is an intelligent rendering of the fight for Irish independence, and the underlying darkness and violence involved. The narrator does a wonderful job, and represents the various characters and different accents masterfully. An extremely satisfying read.
Read
September 23, 2009I didn't enjoy this nearly as much as The Secret Scripture, and I'm glad I read that first because if I'd read this first I wouldn't have bothered with the other. However, I think this is a writer who is gaining in mastery and elegance with successive books, rather than churning them out for the sake of word count.
I won't recount the plot here, but I will comment that part of the reason I wanted to read this was to get a different view of Roseanne Clear, the main character in The Secret Scripture. And what a different view it is. Identical events simply do not match up across the two books; and given that The Secret Scripture was so focused on the unreliability of memory and history and personal slant, it made sense anyway. And gave the reader a lot to think about. What really did happen?
The voice of this narrative gives the curious effect of being told in an Irish accent and I found it a bit tedious after a while. Still, very readable and often moving.
I won't recount the plot here, but I will comment that part of the reason I wanted to read this was to get a different view of Roseanne Clear, the main character in The Secret Scripture. And what a different view it is. Identical events simply do not match up across the two books; and given that The Secret Scripture was so focused on the unreliability of memory and history and personal slant, it made sense anyway. And gave the reader a lot to think about. What really did happen?
The voice of this narrative gives the curious effect of being told in an Irish accent and I found it a bit tedious after a while. Still, very readable and often moving.
October 25, 2023
Barry is so talented no review can do his masterpieces justice.
January 14, 2010
Cast off from his beloved Irish town for "unpatriotic" deeds that were never cast in any such light for him, Eneas McNulty embarks on a life both stunningly eventful and surprisingly not. The heartbreaking accidents of what happens to him and how he gets by and what happens when he does venture home to see his beloved Mam and Pap sent me hurtling through the book, staying up much later than I should have at night. But it's the language, my God, that took it over the edge. Sebastian Barry can WRITE. I have an old hardcover copy of the book and I love Frank McCourt's comment, which floats along the bottom of the page: "Sebastian Barry is a minstrel of a novelist. He could stand at any street corner in the English-speaking world and chant his book, and his hat would overflow in to time with dollars, punts, pounds..." Hear, hear.
October 16, 2020
Διάβασα αυτό το βιβλίο, βλέπω και τη φωτογραφία του εξωφύλλου (περ. 1910), που θυμίζει τόσο πολύ ελληνική ύπαιθρο στο α' μισό του 20ου αιώνα, και λέω τι πονεμένη ιστορία κι αυτή η Ιρλανδία, τόσο παράλληλη με την ελληνική! Φτώχεια και πείνα, θαλασσοδαρμένα βράχια, ξενιτειά, και αυτό το ανεξίτηλο σημάδι του εμφυλίου...
Μα είναι και κάτι άλλο που κεντρίζει την ευαισθησία του έλληνα αναγνώστη: οι αναφορές του Sebastian Barry μέσω του ήρωά του στον (αρχαίο) ελληνικό πολιτισμό και στις ομηρικές έννοιες της μοίρας και του νόστου:
ΣΛΑΪΓΚΟ - ΙΡΛΑΝΔΙΑ (περ. 1910)
"Όταν ο Ινίας [Eneas] ήρθε στην τάξη, ο κύριος Τζάκσον έδειξε ενδιαφέρον για το όνομα Ινίας, τονίζοντας ότι προερχόταν από τη ρωμαϊκή ιστορία, από έναν πολύπαθο και πολυπλάνητο θαλασσοκράτορα. Αλλά τον Ινίας τον έλεγαν απλώς Ινίας από κάποιον προπάππου του πατέρα του, ίσως και αυτόν τον ίδιο τον ισχυρό εξαγωγέα βουτύρου [...]
Ο κύριος Τζάκσον μιλάει πάντα χωρίς ιδιαίτερες παύσεις και αυτό, υποθέτει ο Ινίας, το κάνει για να ορθώνει ένα προστατευτικό ανάχωμα απέναντι στο κύμα βρομιάς που καιροφυλακτεί μεταξύ των μαθητών που υποτίθεται ότι διψούν για γνώση. Τους λέει απίθανα πράγματα και του αρέσει να τους παραθέτει αποσπάσματα από τον Όμηρό του με μια κάπως πομπώδη φωνή. Στην πραγματικότητα, οι αγαπημένες του παραδόσεις είναι για τους αρχαίους Έλληνες, για τις συμφορές τους και τους πολέμους τους, και πώς οι θεοί όριζαν τις τύχες των θνητών, και κόρες μεταμορφώνονταν σε δέντρα, και διάφορα τέτοια. Κι απ' ό,τι τον είχε ακούσει να λέει, ο Ινίας σκέφτεται ότι και οι τύποι αργότερα στη Ρώμη δεν ήταν και πολύ καλύτεροι, και σίγουρα δεν ήταν καλύτερος κι αυτός ο άλλος τύπος ο Ινίας."
(σελ.40)
"Αλλά θα είναι Έλληνας σ' αυτό που θα κάνει τώρα, ακόμη κι αν η πράξη του τον σκοτώσει..."
(σελ.90)
"Την πόλη είναι που αναγνωρίζει σαν παλιά φίλη. Αυτό τον καταπλήσσει. [...] Θα ήθελε πολύ να διασχίσει το ποτάμι και να ρίξει ξανά ένα βλέμμα στο Γκάραβογκ, αλλά στο μεταξύ απομακρύνεται από το ποτάμι. Ίσως αυτή η νοσταλγία να είναι ένα ύπουλο ποτάμι από μόνη της και για την ώρα αρκεί να περάσει αυτό το ποτάμι. Επικίνδυνη ��λξη. Θυμάται τον κύριο Τζάκσον, το δάσκαλο στο σχολείο, που πριν από πολλά χρόνια τους εξηγούσε με την ποντικίσια φωνή του πως "ΝΟΣΤΑΛΓΙΑ" στα ελληνικά σημαίνει κάτι σκληρό και δυσεπίλυτο, ένα συναίσθημα που δεν είναι καθόλου ευχάριστο, το "ΑΛΓΟΣ", δηλαδή τον πόνο, του "ΝΟΣΤΟΥ", δηλαδή της επιστροφής στην πατρίδα. Και πως οι έλληνες ναυτικοί, οι ομηρικοί ή και απλώς οι ναυτικοί του μεγάλου και καθημερινού κόσμου των αρχαίων επικών χρόνων, την υπέμεναν, την φοβούνταν, την αντιμετώπιζαν, πώς τους οδηγούσε στις σπηλιές και στα νησιά του θανάτου, "όπου τίποτα δεν είναι όπως φαίνεται". Ναι, τώρα το καταλάβαινε, αυτό το αινιγματικό λογύδριο του κυρίου Τζάκσον."
(σελ. 193-194)
Δεν είναι λοιπόν να απορεί κανείς που ο μεταφραστής Θοδωρής Τσαπακίδης πήρε την τολμηρή απόφαση να μεταφράσει το Whereabouts του τίτλου ως ΟΔΥΣΣΕΙΑ και ταυτόχρονα , ίσως για τον ίδιο λόγο, δεν άφησε να ηχήσει ξεκάθαρα το Eneas ως Αινείας, αλλά χρησιμοποίησε την αγγλική προφορά του ονόματος (Ινίας), αφαιρώντας του ένα μέρος του συμβολικού του βάρους. Ο ήρωας του Sebastian Barry αισθάνεται πιο κοντά στον Οδυσσέα τον νοσταλγό που διαρκώς επιστρέφει, παρά στον Αινεία τον ιδρυτή μιας νέας πόλης που ξεκινά τη ζωή του από την αρχή.
4 αστεράκια με όλη μου την καρδιά! Θα ξαναδιαβάσω S. B.
Μα είναι και κάτι άλλο που κεντρίζει την ευαισθησία του έλληνα αναγνώστη: οι αναφορές του Sebastian Barry μέσω του ήρωά του στον (αρχαίο) ελληνικό πολιτισμό και στις ομηρικές έννοιες της μοίρας και του νόστου:
ΣΛΑΪΓΚΟ - ΙΡΛΑΝΔΙΑ (περ. 1910)
"Όταν ο Ινίας [Eneas] ήρθε στην τάξη, ο κύριος Τζάκσον έδειξε ενδιαφέρον για το όνομα Ινίας, τονίζοντας ότι προερχόταν από τη ρωμαϊκή ιστορία, από έναν πολύπαθο και πολυπλάνητο θαλασσοκράτορα. Αλλά τον Ινίας τον έλεγαν απλώς Ινίας από κάποιον προπάππου του πατέρα του, ίσως και αυτόν τον ίδιο τον ισχυρό εξαγωγέα βουτύρου [...]
Ο κύριος Τζάκσον μιλάει πάντα χωρίς ιδιαίτερες παύσεις και αυτό, υποθέτει ο Ινίας, το κάνει για να ορθώνει ένα προστατευτικό ανάχωμα απέναντι στο κύμα βρομιάς που καιροφυλακτεί μεταξύ των μαθητών που υποτίθεται ότι διψούν για γνώση. Τους λέει απίθανα πράγματα και του αρέσει να τους παραθέτει αποσπάσματα από τον Όμηρό του με μια κάπως πομπώδη φωνή. Στην πραγματικότητα, οι αγαπημένες του παραδόσεις είναι για τους αρχαίους Έλληνες, για τις συμφορές τους και τους πολέμους τους, και πώς οι θεοί όριζαν τις τύχες των θνητών, και κόρες μεταμορφώνονταν σε δέντρα, και διάφορα τέτοια. Κι απ' ό,τι τον είχε ακούσει να λέει, ο Ινίας σκέφτεται ότι και οι τύποι αργότερα στη Ρώμη δεν ήταν και πολύ καλύτεροι, και σίγουρα δεν ήταν καλύτερος κι αυτός ο άλλος τύπος ο Ινίας."
(σελ.40)
"Αλλά θα είναι Έλληνας σ' αυτό που θα κάνει τώρα, ακόμη κι αν η πράξη του τον σκοτώσει..."
(σελ.90)
"Την πόλη είναι που αναγνωρίζει σαν παλιά φίλη. Αυτό τον καταπλήσσει. [...] Θα ήθελε πολύ να διασχίσει το ποτάμι και να ρίξει ξανά ένα βλέμμα στο Γκάραβογκ, αλλά στο μεταξύ απομακρύνεται από το ποτάμι. Ίσως αυτή η νοσταλγία να είναι ένα ύπουλο ποτάμι από μόνη της και για την ώρα αρκεί να περάσει αυτό το ποτάμι. Επικίνδυνη ��λξη. Θυμάται τον κύριο Τζάκσον, το δάσκαλο στο σχολείο, που πριν από πολλά χρόνια τους εξηγούσε με την ποντικίσια φωνή του πως "ΝΟΣΤΑΛΓΙΑ" στα ελληνικά σημαίνει κάτι σκληρό και δυσεπίλυτο, ένα συναίσθημα που δεν είναι καθόλου ευχάριστο, το "ΑΛΓΟΣ", δηλαδή τον πόνο, του "ΝΟΣΤΟΥ", δηλαδή της επιστροφής στην πατρίδα. Και πως οι έλληνες ναυτικοί, οι ομηρικοί ή και απλώς οι ναυτικοί του μεγάλου και καθημερινού κόσμου των αρχαίων επικών χρόνων, την υπέμεναν, την φοβούνταν, την αντιμετώπιζαν, πώς τους οδηγούσε στις σπηλιές και στα νησιά του θανάτου, "όπου τίποτα δεν είναι όπως φαίνεται". Ναι, τώρα το καταλάβαινε, αυτό το αινιγματικό λογύδριο του κυρίου Τζάκσον."
(σελ. 193-194)
Δεν είναι λοιπόν να απορεί κανείς που ο μεταφραστής Θοδωρής Τσαπακίδης πήρε την τολμηρή απόφαση να μεταφράσει το Whereabouts του τίτλου ως ΟΔΥΣΣΕΙΑ και ταυτόχρονα , ίσως για τον ίδιο λόγο, δεν άφησε να ηχήσει ξεκάθαρα το Eneas ως Αινείας, αλλά χρησιμοποίησε την αγγλική προφορά του ονόματος (Ινίας), αφαιρώντας του ένα μέρος του συμβολικού του βάρους. Ο ήρωας του Sebastian Barry αισθάνεται πιο κοντά στον Οδυσσέα τον νοσταλγό που διαρκώς επιστρέφει, παρά στον Αινεία τον ιδρυτή μιας νέας πόλης που ξεκινά τη ζωή του από την αρχή.
4 αστεράκια με όλη μου την καρδιά! Θα ξαναδιαβάσω S. B.
November 17, 2022
All of the author's books I have read so far have created a special feeling for me, but this one did not succeed to such a great extent. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the ones I read belong to his most recent creations, but perhaps for other factors as well. It certainly contains a very interesting story of an Irishman who was declared a traitor by his countrymen and wandered the world looking for his fortune, but I feel that the narrative is somewhat detached. What is the same is the excellent writing style which was the main reason that made me pick this writer. So I can't say that this book doesn't stand up to the same high standards as his other books I've read, even if I couldn't really engage with it. Maybe another time.
Όσα βιβλία του συγγραφέα έχω διαβάσει ως τώρα μου δημιούργησαν ένα ξεχωριστό συναίσθημα, αυτό εδώ όμως δεν τα κατάφερε σε τόσο μεγάλο βαθμό. Ίσως αυτό οφείλεται στο γεγονός ότι αυτά που διάβασα ανήκουν στις πιο πρόσφατες δημιουργίες του, ίσως και σε άλλους παράγοντες. Περιέχει βέβαια μία πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα ιστορία ενός ιρλανδού που ανακηρύχθηκε προδότης από τους συμπατριώτες του και περιπλανήθηκε στον κόσμο ψάχνοντας την τύχη του, νιώθω όμως ότι η αφήγηση είναι κάπως αποστασιοποιημένη. Αυτό που είναι ίδιο είναι ο εξαιρετικός τρόπος γραφής που ήταν η κύρια αιτία που με έκανε να ξεχωρίσω αυτόν τον συγγραφέα. Οπότε δεν μπορώ να πω ότι αυτό το βιβλίο δεν στέκεται στο ίδιο υψηλό επίπεδο με τα υπόλοιπα βιβλία του που έχω διαβάσει, άσχετα αν εγώ δεν μπόρεσα να εμπλακώ συνθηματικά με αυτό. Ίσως μία άλλη φορά.
Όσα βιβλία του συγγραφέα έχω διαβάσει ως τώρα μου δημιούργησαν ένα ξεχωριστό συναίσθημα, αυτό εδώ όμως δεν τα κατάφερε σε τόσο μεγάλο βαθμό. Ίσως αυτό οφείλεται στο γεγονός ότι αυτά που διάβασα ανήκουν στις πιο πρόσφατες δημιουργίες του, ίσως και σε άλλους παράγοντες. Περιέχει βέβαια μία πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα ιστορία ενός ιρλανδού που ανακηρύχθηκε προδότης από τους συμπατριώτες του και περιπλανήθηκε στον κόσμο ψάχνοντας την τύχη του, νιώθω όμως ότι η αφήγηση είναι κάπως αποστασιοποιημένη. Αυτό που είναι ίδιο είναι ο εξαιρετικός τρόπος γραφής που ήταν η κύρια αιτία που με έκανε να ξεχωρίσω αυτόν τον συγγραφέα. Οπότε δεν μπορώ να πω ότι αυτό το βιβλίο δεν στέκεται στο ίδιο υψηλό επίπεδο με τα υπόλοιπα βιβλία του που έχω διαβάσει, άσχετα αν εγώ δεν μπόρεσα να εμπλακώ συνθηματικά με αυτό. Ίσως μία άλλη φορά.
March 11, 2025
Sad, elegiac, lovely.
September 18, 2012
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is the sixth novel by Irish author Sebastian Barry and involves several characters of Barry’s later novel, The Secret Scripture, and his play, Our Lady of Sligo. Eneas McNulty is born in Sligo at the turn of the century, a gentle soul, naïve, guileless, who finds himself, not, as he had always believed, popular with lots of friends, but instead shunned, an outcast in his own town, his own country. At sixteen he joins the British Merchant Navy for the cause of France in World War One. This alignment with Britain gains him the disapproval of the fledgling republican movement in Ireland. He unwittingly compounds this by joining the Royal Irish Constabulary when he cannot find any other work. Suspected of betraying the men who murder his Sergeant to the Reprisal Man, he finds himself on a blacklist, an Enemy of the Irish People; his only chance to redeem himself is to murder the Reprisal Man, something he refuses to do. Driven from his town and his country, he finds himself fishing in the North Sea and digging in Africa, but always longing to return to Sligo. Barry’s prose is lyrical and moving: “Isn’t she dour too, a deal of the time, dour as a fallen loaf in a cold oven, a disappointed loaf?” “…..Eneas relaxes because she talks just the same as himself, with grey pebbles of the Sligo slingshot talk.” “…any person alive in the world , any person putting a shoulder against a life, no matter how completely failing to do the smallest good thing, is a class of hero.” Barry’s story leads the reader to conclude that the promise of freedom for an oppressed country does not tolerate indecision or errors of judgement: “It is strange that though many years separate the freedom of their homelands, Eneas and Harcourt are scraps of people both, blown of the road of life by history’s hungry breezes.” There is plenty of heartbreak in this tale, but some small crumbs of happiness as well. Eneas is a character to love and feel for: even in his own outcast state, he feels for others, like the shipload of exiled German Jews. There may not be much to laugh about, and yet Barry manages some marvellous dialogue that almost has a tongue-in-cheek feel: Eneas’s conversations with Jonno Lynch are a good example. Eneas’s story intersects with that of Roseanne Clear (The Secret Scripture) but the stories do not match up exactly, perhaps understandable as The Secret Scripture relies on the memory of a hundred-year-old woman. I came to this book after reading The Secret Scripture, which was a wonderful read. I can honestly say that I am not disappointed in this beautifully told story and I will be seeking out more works by Sebastian Barry.
January 3, 2017
I usually pull some favorite quotes from a book as I go along, which is what I had been doing for this one, too. But then I got to the chapter at Dunkirk. And the first two sections of that chapter are amazing, line after line after line. Those first 4 or 5 pages of Chapter 10 are some of the best writing around.
March 26, 2019
Solid boredom. Took about 125 pages to get started and then proceeded to meander here and there and never really got anywhere. It was well-written and extremely uninteresting. Teetering between one and two stars.
February 10, 2015
I did not love this book. It reminded me of a book English professors assign in English 101. Too often I felt as if the author was more interested in creating a flower from words than in telling his story. A couple of times I actually counted how many pages I had left. The story itself is quite good. I wish someone had said to the author, “Not every sentence in the book has to be an artful expression designed to impress readers with how erudite you are.” I even reread passages to make sure I wasn’t missing something. I came to realize I probably was missing some things, but that was okay, because I didn’t care. I would give this book 3.5 stars. It is worth reading if you are as interested in issues surrounding the Irish struggles and thoughtful discussions about prejudice as I am.
June 30, 2020
Our author, Sebastian Barry, was born in Dublin, Ireland and now lives in Glasgow. His education was at Trinity College Dublin so he is, without doubt, a writer of Irish acclaim. Also of interest is that he is a poet in addition to being accomplished in prose. Even before I knew that I had decided that I would call his writing "poetic prose". Very beautiful to read. Our story is not outstanding but I found Eneas to be an interesting guy to follow through his life from his teenage years through his older age in his early 70s. His life is influenced greatly by a misstep he made early on to take a position with the English opposite the Irish. Even though he is unfairly judged, he is blacklisted by the Irish and sentenced to death. Instead, he leaves Ireland and has many diverse life experiences. While he returns to Ireland on just a couple of occasions, he is only able to see his family for a short while until he finds he is still blacklisted and must leave.
I learned additional perspectives on the Irish/English historical conflicts such as I was first introduced to the details in Trinity by Leon Uris, which is a fantastic book. Barry writes in Eneas "
It is their emblem tonight, this night of freedom after seven hundred years of British - what’s the word they like to use? - occupation, domination, something along those lines."
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is a beautiful book but not especially exciting.
I learned additional perspectives on the Irish/English historical conflicts such as I was first introduced to the details in Trinity by Leon Uris, which is a fantastic book. Barry writes in Eneas "
It is their emblem tonight, this night of freedom after seven hundred years of British - what’s the word they like to use? - occupation, domination, something along those lines."
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is a beautiful book but not especially exciting.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 376 reviews