Night Boat to Tangier

by Kevin Barry

From the acclaimed author of the international sensations City of Bohane and Beatlebone, a striking and gorgeous new novel of two aging criminals at the butt ends of their damage-filled careers. A superbly melancholic melody of a novel full of beautiful phrases and terrible men.

In the dark waiting room of the ferry terminal in the sketchy Spanish port of Algeciras, two aging Irishmen -- Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond, longtime partners in the lucrative and dangerous enterprise of smuggling drugs -- sit at night, none too patiently. It is October 23, 2018, and they are expecting Maurice's estranged daughter (or is she?), Dilly, to either arrive on a boat coming from Tangier or depart on one heading there. This nocturnal vigil will initiate an extraordinary journey back in time to excavate their shared history of violence, romance, mutual betrayals and serial exiles, rendered with the dark humor and the hardboiled Hibernian lyricism that have made Kevin Barry one of the most striking and admired fiction writers at work today.

Genres: Fiction, Ireland, Irish Literature, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Book Club, Contemporary

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 20, 2019

About the author

Kevin Barry is an Irish writer. He is the author of two collections of short stories, and the novel City of Bohane, which was the winner of the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Reviews

[Paromjit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delighted to see this on the Booker Longlist!


Kevin Barry is one of my favourite Irish writers and I approached this, his latest novel with a sense of great anticipation and delight. His prose is sublime and lyrical, with his adept shifts in tone, his use of the vernacular, his inclusions of the fantastical, the bad luck of fairy mounds, spells and curses, and the mystics conversing with the dead. It has shades of Waiting for Godot, Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond, are old before their time, ageing has been Irish gangsters, searching for Maurice's daughter, the pretty, pale green eyed, dreadlocked, 23 year old, Dilly, whom they have not seen for 3 years at the Spanish ferry port of Algeciras. They used to be drug smugglers, tainted with the life of danger and fear that the drugs business guarantees, but the market fell through the floor, now its all about slavery and the misery of human trafficking.

The two still exude an air of menace, glimmers of piratical smiles and an edgy jauntiness, despite Charlie's limp and Maurice's damaged eye or perhaps because of this. They have information that Dilly will either be arriving or leaving on the night boat to Tangier, so they hand out flyers, interrogating the 'crusties' as they converse about a past that has led to their presence here at the ferry port. Their fractured cacophony of memories, often morbid and maudlin, take in Cork, Barcelona, Malaga, London and Cadiz, and the love of Maurice's life, Cynthia, Dilly's mother. Their fracturing lives encompass betrayal, the night at the Judas Iscariot club, the plethora of misfortune, lust and other women, paranoia, the fights and fury of drug fuelled lives, the violence, familial mental health issues going back to ancient times, of what it is to be an Irish man and a impoverished future that lies in tatters around them. And within the struggle to bear the weight of their past traumas and toxicity lies the answer as to why Dilly left.

This is a read to be savoured, for its language, for its depth, for the stellar and memorable characterisation, my only complaint is that the novel finished far too soon. It touches on profound issues of what it is to live, identity, love that leaves indelible permanent scars, masculinity, the price of criminality and violence, loss, grief, residing in a landscape of madness, and being a father. A riveting and absorbing novel that I know I will be reading again. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Canongate for an ARC.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anguish
Night Boat to Tangier is a powerful and expressive novel with fascinating characters that have corrupted and harmed themselves and those around them for years. Kevin Barry's unflinching poetic style nails the moments that linger in the mind well after the book is closed.

Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond are two ageing, disfigured, Irish gangsters, waiting in a lifeless ferry terminal in Algeciras. They are waiting for Maurice’s daughter, Dilly, whom he hasn’t seen in 3 years. She will reportedly leave or arrive on a boat from Tangier within the next 24 hours. “Now the hours melt one into the other at the port of Algeciras. For the fading Irish gangsters, the long wait continues.” Life is a series of memories and as they wait for Dilly they reflect on their past, and flashbacks take us to their lives fuelled with sex, drugs, crime, alcohol, sex and drugs.

“They were hammering into the Powers, the John Jameson, it was breakfast from the bottle and elevenses off the mirror. The child would as well be raised by the cats that sat lazily in what April sun troubled itself to come across the rooftops of Berehaven.”

As drug dealers they made money, as poor investors and a wasteful life, they lost money. Haunting, Irish, Bad Luck, mythical forces have been disturbed as Maurice tried to excavate a fairy mound during a building project. Not a bit of wonder his life has gone to shite. He lost the only woman he ever loved, Cynthia – Dilly’s mother, and his memories of her, torture his waking and sleeping moments. He knew he was bad for Cynthia but he also truly loved her too much to completely let go. As we get to know their demons and failings and the reason Dilly left, do Maurice and Charlie deserve our empathy or forgiveness, as our judgement gets blurred seeing the softer side of violent men?

Kevin Barry is such an exceptional author, with writing to be relished for its striking eloquence and absorbing depth. The harsh dialogue and caustic history of Maurice and Charlie are so stunningly portrayed that you gasp and shudder. His books are shorter than average but contain meaning that would take books 3 times the length to achieve.

I would highly recommend this book and I’d like to thank Canongate and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC copy in return for an honest review.

[Vit Babenco · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Spain, at the port of Algeciras, in the ferry terminal, two moth-eaten villains are waiting…
This is the place:

The ferry terminal has a haunted air, a sinister feeling. It reeks of tired bodies, and dread.
There are scraps of frayed posters – the missing.

This is the first knave:

Maurice Hearne’s jaunty, crooked smile will appear with frequency. His left eye is smeared and dead, the other oddly bewitched, as though with an excess of life, for balance. He wears a shabby suit, an open-necked black shirt, white runners and a derby hat perched high on the back of his head. Dudeish, at one time, certainly, but past it now.

This is the second scoundrel:

Charlie Redmond? The face somehow has an antique look, like a court player’s, medieval, a man who’d strum his lute for you. In some meadowsweet lair. Hot, adulterous eyes and again a shabby suit, but dapper shoes in a rusted-orange tone, a pair of suede-finish creepers that whisper of brothels, also a handsome green corduroy neck-tie. Also, stomach trouble, bags like graves beneath the eyes, and soul trouble.

But Kevin Barry writes about his characters as though he plays rag dolls failing to animate them so pretty soon I’ve got disconnected and stayed out of touch right till the end.
And, anyway, villains remain villains even in a vaudeville.

[Richard (on hiatus) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two weeks away from goodreads (exploring lovely Snowdonia, North Wales) and my reviews are beginning to stack up! - so, here goes ............

When we first meet Maurice and Charlie, a couple faded Irish crooks, they are not at their best.
A couple of baggy, fifty something years olds, hats at jaunty angles they sit folded, uncomfortably onto hard, shiny seats - gritty eyed and weary under the hard fizzing lights of Algeciras ferry terminal.
It’s sometime in the unforgiving early hours.
Usually they are charming, full of colourful banter and whimsy, real comedians. At other times they are misty eyed and nostalgic.
Surely these are the epitome of loveable rogues ......... or, are they very bad and dangerous men?
They watch the tired procession of travellers from Tangier straggle through the terminal:
‘It’s as if an ordeal has been passed through. The short crossing to Algeciras can play an odd music inside - trouble has passed this way before, and the old journeys reverberate still.’
The rogues, loveable or not, are waiting for Dilly, a young dreadlocked ‘crustie’ with a dog on a rope.
Strong emotions are stirring.
The story of how they came to this place unfolds through ‘memory trips’, taking in a haphazard route from Cork to Barcelona, Malaga, Cadiz and on to Tangier.
Descriptions are colourful and atmospheric and the language raw and intensely lyrical. The narrative however, is kept taut which is great as a lot of the situations have a melancholy, drugged, dreamlike feel.
I was excited by the writing, it felt fresh and different. The story is shot through with humour and a fair few shocks, but was also surprisingly tender.
I wasn’t sure whether I was going to enjoy this novel but I ended up loving it. Kevin Barry is a very fine author.

[Marchpane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Night Boat to Tangier is not a caper or a ‘crime’ novel, but a character-driven story that just happens to be set in a gangster milieu. Along the way there is tragedy, comedy and the peculiar durability of friendships formed in youth.

Irish crooks Maurice and Charlie, lifelong partners in drug smuggling, are hanging about the ferry terminal at Algeciras hoping to locate an estranged daughter. As they wait for long hours, the story unfolds of these two colourful, wizened-beyond-their-years gangsters over decades of shared criminal exploits, love and loss. It’s Maurice’s tale really, with Charlie playing a key, but secondary, part.

Barry takes some creative approaches here – in particular, one tense confrontation between Maurice and Charlie in a shebeen is related entirely from the POV of onlookers and eavesdroppers. We only get snippets of Maurice and Charlie’s conversation in what is essentially a dumbshow, and there’s palpable menace in the air. Placing the reader at a distance for such a climactic moment shouldn’t work but it does, brilliantly. It’s taut, suspenseful, cut-the-tension-with-a-knife stuff that culminates in a chilling act of violence. This single chapter is so good it would make for a 5-star short story in its own right.

Page by page, Barry’s writing skips with Irish vim and vigour; he’s equally adroit at the comedic and the poignant. The dialogue is snappy, banter between characters delightfully dry, the descriptive prose lyrical and melancholy.

The novel abounds with canny encapsulated images, like these:

‘The city ran a swarm of fast anchovy faces.’

‘their smiles are high and piratical; their jauntiness has a cutlass edge’

‘Charlie got up out of the bed, paced the room like a single human shriek made flesh and bone’

‘her sighs opened pockets of woe in the cold, bright air’

If I have a criticism it is only that I would have liked more of Charlie’s back story, and Cynthia (Maurice’s wife) is barely sketched too, despite her being at the centre of everything. Quibbles aside, Night Boat to Tangier was a thoroughly enjoyable read, with the added bonus of discovering a terrific new-to-me author. 4 stars.

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nominated for the Booker Prize 2019
This book is like a twisted psychological thriller directed by Quentin Tarantin, starring two aging Irish gangsters. It's also a ghost story. A story about Ireland and the search for freedom, if not deliverance. A story about mental illness. A story about drug addiction and dysfunctional families. Ooooh, Kevin Barry, this is a very, very clever book that constantly jumps and shifts, held together by the distinct voices of two men on the edge of mental breakdown.

Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond have been longtime partners in the business of drug smuggling - they made a fortune, but also paid the price: Both struggled with addiction, and Maurice lost his family. Now over 50, they are trying to find Maurice's 23-year-old estranged daughter (mmmhhh....), Dilly. Sitting in the ferry terminal in the Spanish port of Algeciras, they are hoping to catch her on a passage to or from Tangier - or aren't they?

The story is full of edgy dialogue and starts out with a fun, neo-noirish, hard-boiled feel, but soon, mainly due to harrowing and moving flashbacks, develops into an intense psychological tale about two lives that have spiralled out of control. Much like The Man Who Saw Everything, another wonderful Booker contender, Barry contemplates the nature of memory ("The past is uncertain, mobile. It shifts and rearranges back there.") and what our experiences and decisions can turn us into ("He was more than possessed by his crimes and excesses - he was the gaunt accumulation of them.").

I just loved how Barry's story takes unexpected turns and keeps readers on their toes. He also pulls off the whole "ghost" theme (which I will not spoil): "There comes a time when you just have to live among your ghosts" - this novel illustrates this in various ways. A great addition to the Booker longlist, and I want this to be Tarantino's next movie.

And hey, Radiohead experts: If you have thoughts on the reference to Thom Yorke's paralysed eye, please tell me in the comment section!

[Paige · Rating 2 out of 5]

The format and style for this book was overly confusing. The style reads like a play, but the format is just spacing without any indicators. For example, you frequently must figure out when a character is speaking. It was a lot of work.

The language also created a challenge. While many words were not found on my Kindle, some sentences didn’t even make sense to me. I am not sure if this is due to a cultural difference, but as a Westerner I was lost and confused about the context often.
The story was also hard to follow because there were pieces left out; it would skip from one topic in a paragraph to something completely different in the next without ever filling in those missing pieces.

The blurb explains the synopsis quite well. The two men, Charlie and Maurice are old drug dealers waiting at the port looking for Maurice’s daughter. While waiting, they reminisce about their dark past. In my opinion, however, I feel like the blurb should be written in the style and format of the book so that the reader gets a taste of what they are getting into.
I felt like Charlie and Maurice were both interesting characters with interesting backgrounds, but I didn’t feel emotionally attached to them.

Also, a few pages into chapter one I started counting the number of f**k bombs. A few pages into the chapter I counted 13, so that means there are 13+ in chapter one alone. This type of language continues this way for the remainder of the book, if not picking up its pace. There is also a lot of sex and drug usage.

Thanks to Doubleday Books and Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now longlisted for the 2019 Man Booker Prize and re-read accordingly.

This brilliant review in the Dublin Review of Books expresses my views much better than I can

http://www.drb.ie/essays/waiting-for-...

The author’s two previous novels each won a major prize (the Dublin Literary Award and the Goldsmith Prize) and the author, just after the Booker longlisting of this book, had a short story short listed for the prestigious Sunday Times Short Story Prize.

This book started as a screenplay – commissioned for Dublin Abbey Theatre – but never performed it seems, and has ended up as a slightly odd hybrid.

Alternate chapters are set in the seedy Spanish port of Algeciras and are in large part effectively the play (with what seem to be stage instructions and a mainly two part dialogue) loosely disguised as chapters of a novel.

The dialogue itself is Beckett-inspired with a sharp ear for two way dialogue between characters fully conversant with each other’s history and character, and how that can be conveyed both in words and in unspoken or unfinished sentences.

Much of it however is too masculine and in particular two sub-UK gangster movie for my tastes – and by the end on my first reading I rather tired of “You wouldn’t be right in yourself Maurice”, “Which is the what Charlie” and of the rather repetitive use of a single four letter word.

A second read bought out more of the pathos and sense of loss that underlies the macho posturing.

The second part roams backwards in time and across Europe to provide the back story to the two parter, and features some simply brilliant writing in its descriptions of countryside or weather.

The two characters in the first part are two 50+ Irish gangsters/drug smugglers - Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond – they are searching for Maurice’s early 20’s daughter Dilly who they believe will be passing through the port that evening on a Night Boat either to or from Tangier with a group of other “crusties”. Alternate chapters fill in some of the back story of the two characters, Dilly and her mother (Maurice’s wife) Cynthia.

Now the author clearly has an outstanding talent for description – particularly of weather or countryside, take for example:

“October. The month of slant beauty. Knives of melancholy flung in slivers from the sea. The mountains dreamed of the winter soon to come. The morning sounded hoarsely from the caverns of the bay. The birds were insane again”

Or

The peninsula ran its flank along the line of the coast road. The mountain absorbed the evening light and glowed morbidly. A roadside grotto showed the blue virgin. For the souls of the vehicular dead. By ten the moon was visible and drew her strangely. A vivid, late-summer moon. A xanthic was the word moon. She stopped the car and buzzed the window to hear the breath of sea; a strimmer vexed late in a high field; somewhere too the vixen screamed. On the ribs of the sea the last of the evening sun made bone-white marks. The hills for their part vibrated royally. It was close to night and oh-so-quiet again

And for evocative sentences – written in a distinctive style

“And the pattern sound of the family at plan down on the strand – shrieks, soft coaxing, recrimination”

“There was a great stillness in the air. The cathedral bells did not pierce but made a frame for it”

“The hours were heavy and cumbersome and moved by like old horses”

The latter quote substituting for page after page of turgid dialogue in John Lanchester’s “The Wall” (also Booker longlisted).

Which makes the profane-laden and rather clichéd nature of so much of the dialogue such a shame. I have seen it described as pastiche/homage but that is just another way of saying derivative and unimaginative.

The book does provide a mature update to gangster fiction - showing the figurative (as well as literal) hangover and cold turkey of the excesses of drink and drugs as well as the shallow and ephemeral nature of the rewards of crime and their corrosive effect on longer term relationships. The way in which past actions haunt the present is conveyed well in the more mystical elements of the book.

But even here the concentration is on the criminals (and their families) not the real victims. And in a year when the Booker has a great book - Girl, Woman, Other - concentrating on under-represented groups in art and literature, the gangster seems to me the exact opposite - ludicrously over-represented.

I was partly reminded of Lisa McInerney’s two novels – Glorious Heresies where I wrote (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) that “the often depressing subject matter, violence, nastiness of characters and behaviour, sex, drug taking and swearing is offset by the author's empathetic portrayal of the characters and their inner struggles, and her ear for dialogue and her vivid and original use of imagery and language” and “The Blood Miracles” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) where the balance shifted too far the other way.

This is somewhere in the middle in terms of the balance, although there is little doubt that Barry’s astonishing ear for language is some way ahead of McInerney’s and to be honest ahead of most of his contemporaries.

Overall my conclusion was that this was a talented author using a mash up of a gangster love story and Beckettian dialogue as a (sometimes slightly rickety) frame on which to display his literary talent.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Booker Prize Longlist 2019. Kevin Barry’s narration with his mesmerizing Irish accent is enchanting. Aging Irish ‘wise guys’ Charlie Redmond and Maurice Hearne are not! They are lying in wait at the Algeciras ferry terminal in southern Spain for the appearance of Dilly, Maurice’s 23-year-old estranged daughter. They have been hunting for her on-and-off for three years and have it on good authority that she will be traveling through the terminal this evening on her way to-or-from Tangier.

Charlie and Maurice are drug dealers that have earned stupendous money in the past. They blew it on disastrous business deals and their own drug habits. The memories of those self-destructive days rise like phantoms in the dingy terminal—serious crimes, relationships with women that ended badly, bouts of murderous paranoia, and the slow, slow destruction of their souls.

Barry has crafted conversations between these two characters that are ‘pure gold’. There is poetic lyricism between the two that are filled with humor and philosophical musings. Highly recommend.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2019

There is an alchemy about this book, which makes such poetry out of the lives of a pair of brutal unscrupulous drug dealing gangsters and eventually left me feeling sympathy for them.

In the first chapter we meet Maurice and Charlie, two Irishmen in their early fifties, who are waiting in the port at Algeciras where they have been told that Maurice's daughter Dill will be catching a ferry to Tangier. They have not heard from her for several years, and the way they accost strangers who they believe have information establishes their characters and starts the process of revealing the back story. It took me a while to find any interest beyond the undoubted power of the language, but the way Barry gradually introduces the context is very effective and towards the end the book is quite gripping. The chapters set on this one night in Algeciras are alternated with chapters covering the events of the previous 25 years, and how the turbulent relationships developed.

We learn that Maurice's late wife Cynthia also had a long affair with Charlie , and that both men suspect that Dill may be Charlie's daughter. Later in the book some of the Algeciras chapters are written from Dill's perspective, as she passes through the port and sees the two men without either of them being sure they recognised her - Barry effectively explores her conflicted feelings for them before explaining why she has to break away from their grip.

I can see this one making the Booker shortlist, which could be a very strong one - only one of the seven books I have read so far has disappointed me.

[Jerrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great, quick read. Shades of “Waiting for Godot”, two aging drug dealers wait at a Spanish port for a boat from Tangier that may be transporting a daughter of one of the men. She has been wandering since the death of her mother. In beautiful, evocative prose, Barry relates how the lives and fraught friendship of the two men lead them to this place. After a life of crime, violence, and mental illness, can they be redeemed by the one thing that still ties them together? I loved the writing style here. This is my first Kevin Barry novel and it won’t be my last.

[Zoeytron]

Although I loved Kevin Barry's novel City of Bohane, it was impossible for me to find my sea legs with this latest tale.  At 100 pages in, I have regretfully chosen not to finish it.  I'm just reading words at this point, and that's not fair to anyone.  Looking at so many 5-star reviews already posted, it feels like I really missed the boat.

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

BARGAIN I recommend: [Night Boat to Tangier] is $1.99 on Kindle today!

Real Rating: 4.5* of five

Sunsets are biblical, nighttime flowers are dull amethysts, quiet rubies...a tiny, sultana-faced man in lilac slacks and a blazer beneath a pompadour appears to no affect...London's bones limned against weak and apologetic light...this is a beautiful read.

The story is horrible, two men...Maurice and Charlie...whose love of their loucheness and their criminality and their addictions, their love for each other that excludes all the women they adore so helplessly and whose lives they casually, violently ruin, seek their daughter.

No. They aren't gay. The woman they both adored for a time had a baby and, well, who knows whose she really is.

Their awfulness is, in their fiftysomething selves, incredible and unforgivable. Their time in the Bughouse... smoky-grey brick Victoriana carrying the misery of three centuries...detoxing from heroin addiction is not enough to make the difference in their shared past. Their shared room, twin beds, no hint of physical intimacy they're Irish fagawdsake. No one in this book touches except for fucking or killing. People die, have died rather; these men haven't but they know they will. Soonish.

But they are themselves to the end. Does one wonder that Dilly, the desperately sought daughter, left and doesn't wish to be found? One does not. But neither does one feel their hunger to see her again, their desperate desire to connect to Life, is out of character. The way they seek to accomplish that connection is both toxic and perfect. They only know each other in this world. They came to do this desperate thing together. They'll leave together, they'll make whatever there is to be made of breathing after life is over.

I will be a bit let down if this book does not win the 2019 Booker in twelve days. No, strike that, I'll be jawdroppingly stunned and not a little pissed off. Beautiful, poetic, smooth phrases telling hideous, deforming agonies in stertorously breathed oxygen-poor oceans of wreckage aren't common and neither should they be. A diet of these stories would put me in the Bughouse to breathe the smoky-grey brickdust of bygone agonies.

But when they appear these highly luminescent scimitars, curved to the reader's psychic throat, should get the fearful praise and nervous acknowledgment that Charlie and Maurice have always commanded.

[Trudie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kevin Barry is a new author for me and so I did not know what to expect going into this book. For some reason a had the idea of an exotic crime-caper but this is a rather charming character study of two ageing criminals. As with all novels that are lyrical in style, some parts failed to hold my interest, however whenever this novel dips towards boring it has the good graces to be beautifully boring.

I like to think if the Booker panel were to award a prize for "best chapter" ( hard to do because not everybody is into Chapters anymore ) then it would go to the one entitled : “The Judas Iscariot All Night Drinking Club”, this was a small masterpiece of mood and slow building tension.
On balance, I enjoyed Night Boat to Tangier and much like Lanny I think it is a book that would go up in my esteem if I took the time to reread it.

[Peter Boyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

"He adored Cynthia the first time he saw her. When she turned the twist of a smile on him, he felt like he'd stepped off the earth."

Two Irish gangsters, well past their prime, wait for a ferry in the sleepy Spanish port of Algeciras. Maurice Hearne, the one with the missing eye, is hoping to find his daughter Dilly, whom he hasn't seen in over three years. The limping Charlie Redmond, his old pal and business associate, hands out flyers of the missing girl and pesters the poor attendant at the Información desk. The pair have seen better days but they still exude an air of menace. They reminisce about their glory days and mourn for lost love. We also learn how they got their injuries.

The story starts off as a kind of black comedy, the two men cracking jokes and telling stories about their early years, the dialogue singing in their bouncing Cork brogue. The tone often shifts however, into something dark and tragic. Flashbacks explain how they came to make their fortune, a drug-dealing venture providing more profit than they knew how to spend. The relentless danger and pressure took a toll on Maurice: "He was more than possessed by his crimes and excesses - he was the gaunt accumulation of them." He felt his mind begin to unravel and believed that this illness was in his blood:

"He was from a line of madmen centuries deep. Who have all these years crawled beneath the skin of the night and trembled there. Who were found waking in the corners of wet Irish fields. Who were found crawling the rocks and in the seacaves. Found on hospital wards, and in bars, and in the depths of the woods."

Truthfully, Night Boat to Tangier is a love story. Cynthia, Dilly's mother, is the sun, moon and stars for Maurice, always has been. We deduce that she's not in the picture right now and read on to discover why. There were happy times, often drug-fuelled, and plenty of heartbreak, but they produced a beautiful daughter. Cynthia still fills his every waking thought, whether he likes it or not: "He will never lose the feeling of the love that they had together, or the nausea of its absence. Hate is not the answer to love; death is its answer." Eventually we get to hear from Cynthia herself, and we find out what the relationship meant to her:

"The sleeplessness and pain of the long absences, the hot lurches of emotion, the sudden reversals of fortune, the endless pleadings, the slow relentings, the golden times of morphiate heaven, the atrocities on both sides, the shock tactics, and the giddy joy of their lavish sexual reunions"

It's a story of lasting friendship and doomed romance. It's a tale of terrifying madness and reckless humour. Violence always seems to be on cusp of breaking out, but the tension is undercut with surprising tenderness and an unshakeable melancholy. It is written with the agility and conviction of a master storyteller. Night Boat to Tangier is another wild, lyrical dream from the unique imagination of Kevin Barry.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5, rounded down.

Up to about the 60% point, I wasn't really liking this much, as I found it extremely difficult to follow, and the lack of both narrative cohesiveness and the use of obtuse language (I kept hitting the glossary on my Kindle, only to be told 'No definition found') made it more of a slog than I was prepared for. Yes, the language often took flight into lofty heights of lyrical ecstasy, but I am much more interested in plot than language, and that lack of a narrative just wasn't impressing me much. And I found myself often having to reread those poetic passages to make sense of what was happening on a basic level.

But around about the point where things started coming together (i.e., the chapter in the sheheen - one of those aforementioned unknown words with no definition in the Kindle!), I began to fit the various pieces together, and settled down to enjoy the rest of the ride. I'm still not clear on several minor points, and it seems a lot of it was left purposefully vague, but I let that go and decided it didn't really matter. Perhaps at some point, I'll go back and reread (especially should it make the Booker shortlist), with the rudiments of the plot in mind, and see if it coalesces any better for me. But having read that this started out as a play, and with the Irish gangster milieu, I can't help thinking of this as McDonagh Lite - or maybe, a less humorous Waiting for Godot. I can see why it got the Booker nod though, and wouldn't be surprised to find it making the shortlist also.

My sincere thanks to both Netgalley and Doubleday for supplying me with an eBook ARC in return for this honest review.

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 5 out of 5]

5★ (2019 Booker Prize longlist)
“Two Irishmen sombre in the dank light of the terminal make gestures of long-sufferance and woe – they are born to such gestures, and offer them easily.”

Born to such gestures of shrugs, mutterings, and monologues, they certainly must have been. Two old Irish drug smugglers, once successful, have been overtaken by people growing their own weed and ordering the rest on the internet. I can’t do this justice, because the story is secondary to the men, and the men are so strongly Irish, that the lilt of the words inhabits everything.

“Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond sit on a bench just a few yards west of the hatch. They are in their low fifties. The years are rolling out like tide now. There is old weather on their faces, on the hard lines of their jaws, on their chaotic mouths. But they retain – just about – a rakish air.”

It is October 2018, and they are waiting for Dilly, Dill, Maurice’s daughter, 23, because October 23rd is when they’ve been told the wanderers move back and forth between Algeciras, Spain, to Tangiers. They travel rough, often with dogs on a rope and swap looking after dogs. That’s pretty much all they’ve got to go on.

“Charlie has clocked a young man’s arrival in the terminal. Now Maurice notes it too. The man is in his early twenties, dreadlocked, wearing combat trousers and army-surplus boots, and carrying a rucksack in a state of comic dis-habille. He has a dog on a rope.”

He’ll do to start with. They surround Ben on their bench, they wheedle and cajole and insist that he knows something. He insists he has no idea what they’re talking about.

“But Charlie reaches out a friendly hand and lets it hover there, for a moment of comic effect, and now it snaps a clamp on the shoulder and presses the young English firmly down to the bench.

There’s no rush on you, Ben. You know what I’m saying?

But listen, Benny says.

Maurice flicks to a stand and pushes his face close in to Benny’s.

Dilly Hearne is the girl’s name, he says. Dill or Dilly?

She’d be twenty-three years of age now, that kind of way? Charlie says.

I don’t know no Dill or Dilly! I don’t know no . . .

Irish girl?

I known some Irish.

Is that right? Charlie says.

But I don’t know a Dill or Dilly. I mean . . .

Where’d you know these Irish? Where at, Ben? Was this in Granada, was it?

I don’t know! I mean I’ve met loads of f*cking . . .

Benjamin? Maurice says. We’re not saying ye all know each other or anything, like. Sure there could be a half million of ye sweet children in Spain. The way things are going.

Charlie whispers –
Because ye’d have the weather for it.

Maurice whispers –
Ye’d be sleeping out on the beaches.

Like the lords of nature, Charlie says.

Under the starry skies, Maurice says.

Charlie stands, gently awed, and proclaims –
‘The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.’ Whose line was that, Maurice?

I believe it was the Bard, Charlie. Or it might have been Little Stevie Wonder.

A genius. Little Stevie.

Charlie, with a priest’s intelligent smile, limps behind the bench. He wraps a friendly arm around Benny’s neck. He leans to whisper in his ear –

The girls and the dogs all in sweet mounds on the beaches and the sky is laid out like heaven above ye.

You’re lying there, Ben, Maurice says, and you’re looking up at it. You don’t know whether you’re floating or falling, boy. Do you think he can hear the sea, Charlie?

I have no doubt, Maurice. It’s lapping. Softly. At the edges of his dreams.

You know what he don’t want in his dreams, Charlie?

What’s that, Moss?

Us c*nts.

She’s a small girl, Benny. She’s a pretty girl. And you see what it is? Is we’ve been told she’s headed for Tangier.

Or possibly she’s coming back from Tangier.

On the 23rd of the month. Whichever f*cken direction? It’s all going off on the 23rd.

Is what we’ve been informed by a young man in Málaga.

On account of the young man found himself in an informational kind of mood.

Maurice moves close in to Benny again and considers him. There is something of the riverbank in his demeanour. Something beaver-like or weasel-ish. He reads the feint blue flecks of the boy’s irises. He might not live for long, he thinks. There is a hauntedness there. He is scared, and with reason. Now Maurice softly confides –

You see, it’s my daughter that’s missing, fella. Can you imagine what that feels like?

Charlie speaks as softly –”

This continues until Charlie leads the dog away, declares what a shocking place Algeciras is, where a dog could wake up without a head.

“Sort of place things could take a wrong steer on you lightning quick, Ben. You heed?

Dilly. Have you seen Dill, have you?

She’s a small girl.

She’s a pretty girl.

Dill?

Or Dilly?

When the young man answers finally his voice is hollow, weak –

I might have seen her one time in Granada, he says.”

Then the three men go for a drink in the bar.

That is one small part of one scene, but it’s the only way I can give a sense of the flow and the language. Charlie and Maurice (‘Moss’) are old friends and old enemies who have injured and done terrible things to each other. Maurice is missing an eye and Charlie has a bad limp.

They reminisce, accuse, fight, become maudlin, get nostalgic, and finally talk about Dilly and Cynthia, her mother, their drug smuggling, the sex, the highs, the drinking, Maurice’s abandonment – their relationship is complicated and, for me, exhausting, but I was swept along with it all.

Their repetition of the girl’s name and description reminded me of another favourite Irish novel, Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor. I also remembered reading Waiting for Godot (probably in school) where the two men waited on a bench. So I wondered what the result of this search would be.

But this is neither of those stories, and it takes a different, grimy, steamy, exotic turn as they revisit their past travels and deals.

The long quote (notice no quotation marks) is to show how it reads - just crashes over other characters and carries us along on the swell.

I can see why it was longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize.

[Fionnuala]

As we look at them now indeed they seem to clarify: their smiles are high and piratical; their jauntiness has a cutlass edge.

I read this in the busy weeks before Christmas. I had no time to write a review but I did have time to buy three more of Kevin Barry's books...

[Truman32 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know I should like Kevin Berry’s novel Night Boat to Tangiers more than I do. After all, this book has been getting great reviews and it was longlisted for the Booker prize this year. Chip and Joanna Gaines were even overheard remarking that they loved this novel more than “open concept kitchens, rustic furniture made from rusty farm equipment, and shiplap.” !!!!! So even though I feel this novel rates only a solid three, I am going to post my rating as a 4 so no one will know what a thick-headed Neanderthal I actually am. If the thousands of readers who daily peruse my book reviews over their morning cup of dark-roasted signature blend were to know that I am just another knuckle-dragging, mouth breathing mayo-eater, then I would become the laughing stock of all of Goodreads. Why my wife would lose all respect for me, my 9-year-old child would take up rolling drunks with the rough crowd, and my dog would vacate his bowels into my prized suede loafers. I cannot, neigh, I will not let that happen again. So a 4 it is!
Berry’s book has been recognized for his very pretty writing. He takes more care composing his poetic sentences then most pediatricians use delivering newborns. Right there that is a red flag. For me poetic writing is up there with back-alley prostate exams, tax preparation from 3rd graders, and boxes of free spiders as an indicator that I should just look straight ahead, move along at a steady pace, and get as far away as is possible. I prefer my stories to be much more plot driven.
Night Boat to Tangiers tells the tale of two aging criminals waiting in the squalid ferry terminal of Algeciras. Charlie and Maurice are looking for Maurice’s lost daughter. The two Irishmen have been rode hard and put away wet. As they search through crowds of weary travelers, looking to find a clue to the whereabouts of the missing Dilly, they reminisce about their past, their misfortunes, and the hard life-choices that have led them to this terminal at this hour.
Berry uses his novel as an exercise to show humanity how great he can write. His talent is brazenly flaunted and I completely understand all the love, this guy is really good. His sentences must be slowly savored, then regurgitated to be savored again or you will miss key aspects. But this continuous disgorging and studying of the discharge is tiring to me, it is too much like work.
That being said, Night Boat to Tangiers was entertaining and well worth a read, definitely better than open concept kitchens, but no way as good as shiplap.

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book pushed all the literary buttons I like. Not much happens (check), excellent characterization (check), flourishes of stop-and-reread-that-sentence writing (check), and a dash of philosophy (checkmate).

At first it seems we're entering genre fiction with two bad-ass Irish thuggety-thug types waiting at the Spanish port of Algeciras. Maurice (Moss) and Charles (Charlie) might as well be waiting for Godot, but they're waiting instead for Moss' long-lost daughter, Dilly. "She's a small girl," they tell people. "She's a pretty girl."

She's a smart girl, too.

Anyway, the first thing to hit you in this book is the characterization through dialogue. These guys, despite their life of drug-dealing and crime, are a bit of a match for the Greek philosophers as they consider the past and the ever-shortening future. And they're funny, too, the way they threaten people they suppose are holding back, and the way they caution and correct each other like two little old ladies.

The novel goes into Ping-Pong mode with the chapters: present, flashback, present, flashback. We meet Moss' wife Cynthia, a woman that Charlie loves as well. We meet Dilly as a child. We also meet Moss' mistress in Spain, Karima.

If you can call it a plot, the back-and-forth's purpose is simply to explain how these two sad sacks got to the port city of Algeciras, desperately seeking Dilly. Thus, what could be exposition, is drawn out with brief episodes that bring the past to life. Nothing fancy. A time-tested device of fiction.

Kevin Barry knows his way around a sentence, too. Some of his description and figurative language were a rather delightful surprise. In that sense, it was good coming into the book with no expectations and no knowledge of Barry as a writer.

Pleasant, meet surprise! Putting me of a mood for 5 stars, knowing, of course, that my literary buttons may not be the same as your literary buttons. We all have our quirks, no?

[Ingrid · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's sad, it's rough and it's beautiful.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audiobook....read by the author, Kevin Barry

It took me a little time to feel committed to this story. For me...It didn’t pull me in right away....but after a few chapters...I ‘was’ hooked.

This was my first experience with Kevin Barry’s work.

Maurice and Charlie, two geezers, Iris buddies, (and sometimes competitors), in their 50’s were waiting for ‘ the night boat’ ...in the port of Algeciras. (the largest commercial port and the Mediterranean —in Spain).
They were looking for Maurice’s missing 23 year old daughter, Dilly....who had been missing for 3 years. But rumor had it that Dilly would be be arriving -or going - ‘from-or-to’ Tangier on a ferry boat.
For 24 hours the two men reminisce...flashbacks memories about their younger days: Partners in crime...( drugs, sex, ha...not rock n’roll...but rather their shady gangster past, and bad young men choices).
The painful memories of their past was brutal....individually- and jointly.
Yet...with the exceptional Irish prose ... laughter got the best of me at times too.

I came to really care for Maurice and Charlie ....( loved their dialogue- sometimes rather funny, other times, either one of these men seem so vulnerable....their souls aching).
The language stood out as almost a character itself....with eerie and beautiful descriptions.

A splendid smoky-dark gritty-ness: dialogue and atmospheric...with underline feelings of sadness, grief, love, hope, and redemption.

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm throwing stars about like there's no end to them at the moment but: this is Barry's best work and is stupendously good, and forms part of a Booker longlist that's potentially as interesting/excellent as any I can remember.

'There comes a time when you just have to live among your ghosts. You keep the conversation going. Elsewise the broad field of the future opens out as nothing but a vast emptiness '

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kevin Barry believes in an economy of words. I love the concept and Barry has embraced it to the core for this novel. As a college professor, I constantly pushed this on my students, who thought more was better. I recently saw Barry (July 2019) in Armagh, Northern Ireland, in conversation with the Belfast-based writer, Jan Carson. He described his approach to writing, and in particular, the writing of this book. His process is to write and write and write, and then pull out the best parts. I often express my growing impatience with the proliferation of books that are grossly inflated, poorly edited, and too often veer into poor writing. This novel is the antithesis of this trend. Barry’s labor has resulted in a novel that provides gorgeous and profound prose, and a very moving story.

This novel is the story of an Irish father searching for his daughter. Maurice Hearne and his longtime partner, Charlie Richmond are in the port of Algeciras, Spain looking for Maurice’s estranged daughter, Dilly. Dilly, in her early 20’s, is part of a loosely organized troupe of 21st century hippies who haunt the port, and cross back and forth to Morocco. They are involved in the drug trade, albeit on a small scale. In this respect, Dilly is a chip off the old block. Maurice made and lost fortunes dealing heroin in Ireland. But despite his chaotic life, Maurice was a man who loved his family. Maurice was forced to leave that life behind to escape other criminals who’d be delighted to kill him.

The opening scene of the novel is a comical scene in the port of Algeciras as Maurice and Charlie try to ask about the ferry schedule at the information kiosk. Maurice and Charlie and their endless wait for the arrival of the ferry from Tangier may remind readers of Didi and Gogo in Waiting to Godot. But the resemblance is superficial. Barry’s deftness at creating humorous scenes is evident in this segment. The attempts of the two Irishmen to get anything (even acknowledgement) from the employee at information kiosk resembled collisions I’ve observed in Scottish tourism offices. Years ago, a Scottish friend warned me that tourist offices were known for not giving tourists information. They see their job as promoting local tourism and don't want to help tourists looking to go to other parts of Scotland. On one occasion near Skye, I observed some Spanish tourists in the local tourism office looking for information. Pointing to their map of the northwest coast beyond Skye, they asked the tourist office employee what they could see up that way. The man told them “I cannae say” and “I dinnae know” – using a mix of Scots and English. The Spaniards were flummoxed and though tempted to intervene, I didn’t relieve their confusion. But I must add that I appreciate the Scottish approach to tourism, and it makes me laugh. It is worth knowing that the offer of information whether in Algeciras or Skye can be an empty promise.

The story shifts back and forth in time as Barry builds a portrait of a criminal who is not, at his core, a bad man. Maurice has a good heart and has done some very bad things. He dealt drugs in Cork, and the surrounding areas, and his place to escape was the Beara peninsula. Maurice’s one true love was Didi’s mother, Cynthia, and he adored his daughter from the moment she was born. He spent years in Spain, in Málaga, Barcelona, and Seville on the run from Irish thugs, and these segments feature luscious prose. The segments describing the atmosphere of the Spanish cities were my favorites as exemplified in this segment set in Barcelona :
Outside the internet café, a gypsy kid and his girlfriend sold punnets of chestnuts from a roasting cart and kissed. They looked like the year 1583. The air was dark blue and had the smoke of old poetry at dusklight.

There are also some stunning descriptions of the Beara Peninsula:
This was the summer Dilly lit out for the territories late at night and drifted about the empty country roads alone. To be at the far end of the peninsula on a summer’s night with a paleness in the sky after midnight even – it was like a sad film about an island of the north. When you know at some level that you’re saying goodbye to it all. The loveliness of these bereft roads by night. The ferns in the ditches that were hardly moving but breathed in the warm night breeze, it seemed, and even spoke.

Barry also writes screenplays and like his novel City of Bohane, this novel is steeped with a cinematic vision. As an ardent reader and a lover of film, Barry gives me both in one beautiful package. Barry’s spot on the 2019 Booker Longlist is well deserved. This novel serves up Barry’s classic humor, and characters to care about, and is his best to date.

For my November contemporary Irish fiction book club, I reread the book by listening to the audiobook. It was read by the author. I highly recommend both the audiobook and reading the physical book. Reading the book lets the reader savor the language and the writing. It is a wonderful novel and Barry's reading of it is delightful.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm devastated that I didn't love this, given how much this seemed to be right up my literary alley.  I was confident that the criticisms I'd heard - slow, not emotionally engaging enough, too much drug talk - wouldn't faze me.  I mean, I know my tastes; two aging Irish gangsters sitting on a pier discussing their shared history of drug smuggling actually seems like a recipe for perfection.  But to say that this left me cold would be an understatement.  Barry's writing is really very good, so that was never the problem.  I think my main issue was the alternating past and present chapters; the present held my attention while the past chapters were nothing but tedium.  As others have mentioned, it's very reminiscent of Waiting for Godot, but while Barry occasionally nailed Beckett's madcap humor, this had none of the pathos.

[Neale · Rating 4 out of 5]

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 BOOKER PRIZE.

Maurice and Charlie are both Irish, they are both in their fifties, and they are both dressed in cheap suits waiting at the Spanish port of Algeciras. They seem to be locked into a perpetual never ending conversation, jumping from stories of their past with the casual ease of long-time friends. One will start a sentence, the other will finish it. One will ask a question, the other will answer it. The reader will find it obvious from their demeanour that they are gangsters, crooks, men accustomed to violence. It is also only a short wait before we find out that the pair are looking for a young girl named Dilly Hearne, and that they are expecting to find out something on this day, at this port about her whereabouts.

She is either travelling to Tangier, or returning from Tangier, whichever it is, Maurice and Charlie have been told by a man from Malaga that it will happen today, the 23rd of the month. They find a young man named Benny and his dog, and, with veiled threats promising furtive violence, they find out from Benny that he may know something about Dilly’s location. Being Irish gangsters, Maurice and Charlie decide to take Benny to the nearest pub to find out more. Maurice tells Benny that Dilly is his daughter and has been looking for her for three years. Once in a more secluded area, the furtive violence emerges from hiding and Benny knows that he is in deep trouble.

The second chapter will jump back in time to the 90’s with a lone Maurice meeting a man who gives him a piece of paper after he has written the number of a bank account on it, all the while warning Maurice to forget going through with whatever he plans to do. The man is clearly shaken with fear and there is no uncertainty that whatever Maurice is planning it will be fraught with danger.

So the novel is really two narratives, one set in the present, with Maurice and Charlie looking for Maurice’s daughter, and one set in the 90’s which is used to present Maurice and Charlie’s early years and how they became the men they are in the present narrative.

Late in the novel, we see the narrative from Dilly’s perspective and get an insight as to why she has run away. Her fears that she may become like her father and fall into the same way of life, and perhaps something else.

The novel, is however, predominantly about Maurice’s life, told through his conversation with Charlie in the present, and the alternate chapters which take part in the past. For me the strength of the novel are the conversations, they are so wonderfully written. I could imagine the Irish accents as I tried to decipher some of the slang. Yes indeed, the Irish slang flies thick and fast. What is it about the Irish language that makes it so readable?

Maurice is such an interesting character. He seems to have been at war with himself his whole life. Battling his urges and lusts. Lusts for drugs, lusts for sex, lusts for anything but idleness and boredom. Much of his life has been in torment. He questions his character, and as he gets older starts to think about his mortality. He feels that finding his daughter may be his redemption.

This is a brilliant short novel. How Barry squeezes such a narrative into such a small page count is tremendous. 4.5 Stars!

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Far from a traditional, plot driven crime novel, Night Boat to Tangier is perhaps better described as a character study of two ageing criminals, or an examination of the impact a lifestyle of crime has on relationships and our psyche. Barry is an outstanding storyteller. Although largely plotless, this novel is one that creates both a vivid sense of place and person. In few words, Barry seems able to say a lot about people, their evolution and weaknesses, and the fragility of our worlds in the face of more subversive elements of society. I have a high threshold for this kind of narrative, and I found Barry’s writing highly engaging. This was exactly the delight I expected it to be.

[Kristy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I struggled with this character driven, loose plot novel. I seem to be in the minority here, but I didn't find it engrossing, rather I found it at times to sound a little pretentious. The prose tended to be melodramatic, but I did like how atmospheric they were as well.

Literary fiction is not my favorite genre, so I don't know that I was the intended audience for this. I would caution anyone else who also reads few literary fiction books, but recommend it to those that enjoy it.

I received an advanced copy through Netgalley in return for an honest review.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Bad luck, bad luck, bad luck.”

Oh, this is a wonderfully lyrical novel full of hot summer night sweat and alcohol and lust and anger and violence and regret, just seething with passions and profane and poetic in the finest noir style. In the Spanish port of Algeciras, two aging Irishmen — Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond, longtime partners in smuggling drugs — sit waiting for Maurice's estranged daughter, Dilly, to either arrive on a boat coming from Tangier or depart on one heading there.

“The port by night had a hot, diabolic quality. It rang of the past but was of the new century. On such a clear night you could see an hour south to the lamps of Tangier.”

Dilly could actually be Charlie’s daughter, no one knows. And nothing much actually happens; the night allows the two men to reminisce, to tell the stories of their middle-aged, brutal lives where they inflicted terror and pain on everyone. I see Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, but no, they have to be Irish! Consider! Suggest?

“These were fabled people. These were tricky times. They were in a moment of dangerous splendour. The men were lizardly, reptilian. They wore excellent fucking shoes.”

[I’ll just say if you don’t like reading or hearing (I listened to Kevin Barry read this in his gorgeous, sadly existential voice) the word “fuck,” or similar words, you should not read any books about Irish (or NYC, or maybe any) gangsters.]

Yes, profanity, but within so much noirish gangster poetry:

“The men are elegiacal, woeful, heavy in the bones.”

“He was more than possessed by his crimes and excesses – he was the gaunt accumulation of them.”

“Bad luck, bad luck – the idea entertained itself, fattened, came to fruition. They took cocaine in breakneck quantities against the idea of the bad luck. They were hammering into the Powers, the John Jameson, it was breakfast from the bottle and elevenses off the mirror.”

And when they are not talking or drinking they are reminiscing about past acts, amidst past drinking:

“The motions of the alcohol are familiar: the easy warming, the calm sustain, and now the slow grading into remorse. A melancholy hour falleth. As afflicts a gentleman of colourful history. But, if he has nothing else to his name, he has his regrets, and these are not without value to the martyr’s self-portrait displayed in his mind’s eye. I am fifty-one years old, he thinks, and still at least halfways in love with meself. All told you’d have to call it a fucken achievement.”

And lots of flowing money, so much money, most of it gone. And of women:

“She had a smile like a home-made explosive device.”

“There is a stab of awareness at the beginning and at the end of love, and the feeling precisely replicates—it’s a twinge of cold certainty at either end of the affair, and it is twice terrifying.”

And Ireland:

“Fucking Ireland. Its smiling fiends. Its speaking rocks. Its haunted fields. Its sea memory. Its wildness and strife. Its haunt of melancholy. Its haunt of melancholy.”

Wow, what a writer, and what a book of lyrical storytelling in the noir tradition.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

3+

Maurice and Charlie, two Irish drug smugglers, two aging common criminals, are the protagonists in this character driven, dark and haunting story. They are waiting in the Spanish port of Algeciras. Maurice’s estranged daughter, a pretty girl as the reader is told multiple times, is either arriving from or deporting to Tangier. And as they wait and wait, these sketchy men reminisce. Through flashbacks we are told of their life of crime, the flush times when the money flowed in and the times of poverty, violence, betrayals, and drug abuse. These scoundrels are not remorseful, just melancholy, always thinking their next shot of whiskey might turn things around. Their spicy vocabulary is just what I would expect from two such characters. I can’t say I liked them nor approved of their violent ways, but there was some feeling of understanding. Perhaps it was a touch of empathy but whatever it was, I couldn’t judge them. Kevin Barry doesn’t judge them either.

Barry does a terrific job portraying these two antiheroes. Their dialogue with its abundance of obscenities could not have been more realistic. The setting is dark and dangerous and so are these older men. One of the ten best books of 2019 by The NYT and long listed for The Booker Prize, Night Boat to Tangier is not for those looking for an upbeat story nor those that are offended by vulgarity. But if you like excellent writing and unconventional characters, you may want to read this.