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Dunne Family #2
Annie Dunne
It is 1959 in Wicklow, Ireland, and Annie and her cousin Sarah are living and working together to keep Sarah’s small farm running. Suddenly, Annie’s young niece and nephew are left in their care.
Unprepared for the chaos that two children inevitably bring, but nervously excited nonetheless, Annie finds the interruption of her normal life and her last chance at happiness complicated further by the attention being paid to Sarah by a local man with his eye on the farm.
A summer of adventure, pain, delight, and, ultimately, epiphany unfolds for both the children and their caretakers in this poignant and exquisitely told story of innocence, loss, and reconciliation.
7 hrs. 52 min.
Unprepared for the chaos that two children inevitably bring, but nervously excited nonetheless, Annie finds the interruption of her normal life and her last chance at happiness complicated further by the attention being paid to Sarah by a local man with his eye on the farm.
A summer of adventure, pain, delight, and, ultimately, epiphany unfolds for both the children and their caretakers in this poignant and exquisitely told story of innocence, loss, and reconciliation.
7 hrs. 52 min.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
206 people are currently reading
1807 people want to read
About the author
Sebastian Barry
52 books2,118 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 293 reviews
October 26, 2018
Oh, Annie – Annie Dunne. How my heart went out to you as you told me your stories – past and present – and how the future held such strong fears for you.
”What is this growing old, when even the engine that holds our despair and hope in balance begins to fail us? .”
Annie Dunne was left with a lump high on her spine after a childhood bout with polio. Her mother died young and her father did his best to look after his daughters. He was in charge of all the police forces in Dublin and they lived in Dublin Castle, along with other members of the police force. Annie Dunne took great pride in this, even though her father’s mental health failed after 40 years of promotions at his work.
Annie’s sister Maud took ill and Annie went to help Maud’s husband Matt in raising their 3 sons and looking after their home. Two years after Maud died, Matt decided to re-marry and Annie was once more set adrift. She ended up living with her cousin Sara near the place where many of her relatives grew up, and when Matt’s young grandchildren came for a visit while their parents set up their new home in London, Annie was overjoyed.
”The wind goes on with its counting of the leaves in the sycamores, a hundred and one, a hundred and two.”
The lifestyle on Sara’s tiny farm was one the city-bred youngsters adored, and Annie felt the same way. They had adventures – a runaway horse, a band of ruffians trying to break in one night, and then there was Billy. With his smooth talk and charm toward Sara, Annie felt her security was threatened yet again.
”Billy Kerr would harass the deer if there was any profit to himself in doing so, as he is a man without qualities. There is probably a Billy Kerr, or someone like him, in all human affairs. Otherwise all would be well, continually.”
Despite her many flaws, Annie Dunne stole my heart and my empathy. Whether I agreed with her (most times) or not (sometimes), I couldn’t help but feel compassion for her in her struggles with herself – and a world that had moved on with her clinging to its shirt tails.
With his poetic and lyrical style, Sebastian Barry’s story of Annie Dunne, narrated by herself, kept me mesmerized by her perspective of everything around her - and my emotions ran up and down the scales of a celestial keyboard.
Sensitive and alive with beauty, fear, anxiety, and love – I would highly recommend this family saga to everyone who enjoys an in-depth character study that explores the heights and depths of a person living a simple life of great complexity.
With thanks and appreciate to Jamie for lending me the use of a computer to write and upload my review. May my computer’s current shop visit be the last one for a very long time!
”What is this growing old, when even the engine that holds our despair and hope in balance begins to fail us? .”
Annie Dunne was left with a lump high on her spine after a childhood bout with polio. Her mother died young and her father did his best to look after his daughters. He was in charge of all the police forces in Dublin and they lived in Dublin Castle, along with other members of the police force. Annie Dunne took great pride in this, even though her father’s mental health failed after 40 years of promotions at his work.
Annie’s sister Maud took ill and Annie went to help Maud’s husband Matt in raising their 3 sons and looking after their home. Two years after Maud died, Matt decided to re-marry and Annie was once more set adrift. She ended up living with her cousin Sara near the place where many of her relatives grew up, and when Matt’s young grandchildren came for a visit while their parents set up their new home in London, Annie was overjoyed.
”The wind goes on with its counting of the leaves in the sycamores, a hundred and one, a hundred and two.”
The lifestyle on Sara’s tiny farm was one the city-bred youngsters adored, and Annie felt the same way. They had adventures – a runaway horse, a band of ruffians trying to break in one night, and then there was Billy. With his smooth talk and charm toward Sara, Annie felt her security was threatened yet again.
”Billy Kerr would harass the deer if there was any profit to himself in doing so, as he is a man without qualities. There is probably a Billy Kerr, or someone like him, in all human affairs. Otherwise all would be well, continually.”
Despite her many flaws, Annie Dunne stole my heart and my empathy. Whether I agreed with her (most times) or not (sometimes), I couldn’t help but feel compassion for her in her struggles with herself – and a world that had moved on with her clinging to its shirt tails.
With his poetic and lyrical style, Sebastian Barry’s story of Annie Dunne, narrated by herself, kept me mesmerized by her perspective of everything around her - and my emotions ran up and down the scales of a celestial keyboard.
Sensitive and alive with beauty, fear, anxiety, and love – I would highly recommend this family saga to everyone who enjoys an in-depth character study that explores the heights and depths of a person living a simple life of great complexity.
With thanks and appreciate to Jamie for lending me the use of a computer to write and upload my review. May my computer’s current shop visit be the last one for a very long time!
April 1, 2017
2.5 Stars
Sebastian Barry is my favourite Irish author and this is my seventh novel by him. Annie Dunne is his second novel and for me his weakest link in the chain of novels. The prose which he is renowned for is not present in this book nor is his characters well developed compared to books like The Secret Scripture or A Long Long Way and this is just one of those reads where little happens and the plot is wanting in many ways.
The book is a short read at under 230 pages and is set in a small farmhouse in Co Wicklow in the late 1950s. Annie Dunne an unmarried woman in her sixties who lives with her similarly solitary cousin Sarah on the farm. In the summer of 1959, they are asked to care for their grand-niece and grand-nephew whose parents are going to England to seek work.
I normally love books set in this time frame in Ireland but this one just didn't work for me as I didn't get a sense of time and place or the characters just seemed felt and the prose not up to Barry's standard. Perhaps he has me spoilt with all his other great novels.
I still highly recommned A Long Long Way or The Secret Scripture The Temporary Gentleman or On Canaan's Side
Sebastian Barry is my favourite Irish author and this is my seventh novel by him. Annie Dunne is his second novel and for me his weakest link in the chain of novels. The prose which he is renowned for is not present in this book nor is his characters well developed compared to books like The Secret Scripture or A Long Long Way and this is just one of those reads where little happens and the plot is wanting in many ways.
The book is a short read at under 230 pages and is set in a small farmhouse in Co Wicklow in the late 1950s. Annie Dunne an unmarried woman in her sixties who lives with her similarly solitary cousin Sarah on the farm. In the summer of 1959, they are asked to care for their grand-niece and grand-nephew whose parents are going to England to seek work.
I normally love books set in this time frame in Ireland but this one just didn't work for me as I didn't get a sense of time and place or the characters just seemed felt and the prose not up to Barry's standard. Perhaps he has me spoilt with all his other great novels.
I still highly recommned A Long Long Way or The Secret Scripture The Temporary Gentleman or On Canaan's Side
March 15, 2019
”Oh, Kelsha is a distant place, over the mountains from everywhere. You go over the mountains to get there, and eventually, through dreams.
“I can picture the two children in their coast arriving. It is the start of the summer and all the customs of winter and spring are behind us. Not that those customs are tended to now, much.
“My grand-nephew and grand-niece, titles that sound like the children of a Russian tsar.
“My crab-apple tree seems to watch over their coming, like a poor man forever waiting for alms with cap in hand. There is a soughing in the beech trees and the ash, and the small music of the hens. Shep prances about like a child at a dance with his extra coat of bog muck and the yellow effluents that leak into yards where dogs like to lie.”
Annie’s thoughts throughout wander from the past to the present, from the esoteric to the day-to-day routines of life, the changes she’s seen over the years since her birth in 1900. Her life has not been easy, a bout with polio as a young girl left her with a noticeable rounded curvature of her spine, she is 59 as this story begins, living with her relative, Sarah Cullen born two years before Annie, ”…born in the last flutter of the old century,” neither of them have ever been married, and so Sarah shares this small impoverished farm in Wicklow with Annie.
”There is only a whisper of time between then and now, it seems to me. The clock of the heart does not follow the one on the mantelpiece.”
Every generation, I suppose, has a time they look back on fondly, and with some disdain for some of the changes that have come with the times. Annie’s memories are filled with the memories of her young days, when there was more regard for the ways of others, a sense of permanence that seems to have disappeared, and a grander way of life. Caught in the between times, when cars have just begun to be seen now and again, her life seems to be filled with more losses than gains, yet she remains content.
Still, with Sarah, they are close as can be in the small home, with only one bed to share. Life has become a routine of hard work, on the farm and in the home, but at the end of each day they are satisfied with the life they have, and are glad to have one another.
When summer arrives, Annie’s widowed nephew brings his two children to stay for the summer so he and his new wife begin to turn their new house into a home.
”My spirit is altered by the deepening length of the days, the pleasant trick that summer plays, of suggesting eternity, when the light lies in the yard… Hopefully heaven itself will consist of this, the broadening cheer of light when I walk out into the morning yard.”
Sarah had inherited the farm from her mother “in the old days, so when Billy Kerr comes to speak to Sarah about selling her pony so that she might have more cash, Annie is concerned both for Sarah and herself, what would come of both of them in the chain of events she sees following should Sarah agree.
”… there are many other matters attached in a long necklace of importance and scripture, the very scripture that keeps Sarah happy on her hill and her mind in general a possible human mind, and not a mind to languish in the county home, as my own father’s mind once did, because the meanings and musics of his own world were torn away from him and he could not find a singing to answer that pain and change.”
This reads like a poetic love letter to Ireland, to all the men and women, like Annie, left behind by a changing world, the difficulties of accepting that life is a work in progress, always changing. A love letter to life, itself.
Many thanks to Jaline, whose gorgeous review prompted me to finally obtain a copy of this one to read. Please check out Jaline’s review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
“I can picture the two children in their coast arriving. It is the start of the summer and all the customs of winter and spring are behind us. Not that those customs are tended to now, much.
“My grand-nephew and grand-niece, titles that sound like the children of a Russian tsar.
“My crab-apple tree seems to watch over their coming, like a poor man forever waiting for alms with cap in hand. There is a soughing in the beech trees and the ash, and the small music of the hens. Shep prances about like a child at a dance with his extra coat of bog muck and the yellow effluents that leak into yards where dogs like to lie.”
Annie’s thoughts throughout wander from the past to the present, from the esoteric to the day-to-day routines of life, the changes she’s seen over the years since her birth in 1900. Her life has not been easy, a bout with polio as a young girl left her with a noticeable rounded curvature of her spine, she is 59 as this story begins, living with her relative, Sarah Cullen born two years before Annie, ”…born in the last flutter of the old century,” neither of them have ever been married, and so Sarah shares this small impoverished farm in Wicklow with Annie.
”There is only a whisper of time between then and now, it seems to me. The clock of the heart does not follow the one on the mantelpiece.”
Every generation, I suppose, has a time they look back on fondly, and with some disdain for some of the changes that have come with the times. Annie’s memories are filled with the memories of her young days, when there was more regard for the ways of others, a sense of permanence that seems to have disappeared, and a grander way of life. Caught in the between times, when cars have just begun to be seen now and again, her life seems to be filled with more losses than gains, yet she remains content.
Still, with Sarah, they are close as can be in the small home, with only one bed to share. Life has become a routine of hard work, on the farm and in the home, but at the end of each day they are satisfied with the life they have, and are glad to have one another.
When summer arrives, Annie’s widowed nephew brings his two children to stay for the summer so he and his new wife begin to turn their new house into a home.
”My spirit is altered by the deepening length of the days, the pleasant trick that summer plays, of suggesting eternity, when the light lies in the yard… Hopefully heaven itself will consist of this, the broadening cheer of light when I walk out into the morning yard.”
Sarah had inherited the farm from her mother “in the old days, so when Billy Kerr comes to speak to Sarah about selling her pony so that she might have more cash, Annie is concerned both for Sarah and herself, what would come of both of them in the chain of events she sees following should Sarah agree.
”… there are many other matters attached in a long necklace of importance and scripture, the very scripture that keeps Sarah happy on her hill and her mind in general a possible human mind, and not a mind to languish in the county home, as my own father’s mind once did, because the meanings and musics of his own world were torn away from him and he could not find a singing to answer that pain and change.”
This reads like a poetic love letter to Ireland, to all the men and women, like Annie, left behind by a changing world, the difficulties of accepting that life is a work in progress, always changing. A love letter to life, itself.
Many thanks to Jaline, whose gorgeous review prompted me to finally obtain a copy of this one to read. Please check out Jaline’s review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
August 23, 2019
"Where has all the days gone? How am I nearly 62 next year and the summers gone that were allotted to me, and days and weeks and years all added up to that amount already? Where is all that time? Where is it gone? We were young one day and that tomorrow came and we were no longer young".
Well said, Sarah, well said. Annie lives on the charity of her cousin Sarah, who owns a farm of 7 acres, a stone and sod house, 2 cows, chickens, and one nasty old pony. Annie works hard right beside Sarah just for daily subsistance. Both of them spinsters, there's no man for protection or heavy work. Sarah is a sweet, kind soul who sees everything in simple terms. Annie has had a hard life, and is bitter, very intelligent, but still capable of love.
County Wicklow, Ireland, in 1959 was not an easy place to live. Things were changing, but slowly. A lot happens in this short novel, good and bad, as these old ladies try to navigate their small world, deal with 2 small children left with them for the summer, emotional upheavals, love in all its guises, and old memories and guilts. All in the beautiful language I've come to expect from Sebastian Barry.
Well said, Sarah, well said. Annie lives on the charity of her cousin Sarah, who owns a farm of 7 acres, a stone and sod house, 2 cows, chickens, and one nasty old pony. Annie works hard right beside Sarah just for daily subsistance. Both of them spinsters, there's no man for protection or heavy work. Sarah is a sweet, kind soul who sees everything in simple terms. Annie has had a hard life, and is bitter, very intelligent, but still capable of love.
County Wicklow, Ireland, in 1959 was not an easy place to live. Things were changing, but slowly. A lot happens in this short novel, good and bad, as these old ladies try to navigate their small world, deal with 2 small children left with them for the summer, emotional upheavals, love in all its guises, and old memories and guilts. All in the beautiful language I've come to expect from Sebastian Barry.
November 21, 2020
Oh Anny Dunne. How is it that in spite of your shortcomings you captured my heart and those of my bookish friends? Is it perhaps because we see a little (or perhaps a lot) of ourselves in you? You certainly wrung my emotions and hung them out to dry.
March 3, 2012
Has anyone else noticed? In movies, a character's name alone can define.
I submit to you: Annie.
In the movies, Annies are always: cute/pretty/beautiful; perky/down-to-earth; inquisitive to intelligent/well-read; loyal/wholesome; a perfect woman for a good man.
Think about it.
In Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner is devoted to 'Annie', in jeans and flannel shirts, a Berkeley degree, who believes in magic and the first amendment.
Sleepless in Seattle. Tom Hanks will never marry again. Except his son finds him 'Annie'. "You're 'Annie'?" And they hold hands forever after as Jimmy Durante sings 'Make Someone Happy'.
Father of the Bride. Of course his daughter's name is 'Annie'. And they play a one-on-one game of basketball.
Bull Durham. Susan Sarandon is 'Annie', who knows all about baseball and literature and gets weak at the greatest soliloquy since all that Hamlet stuff.
Overboard. Goldie Hawn is Joanna Stayton, filthy rich and insufferable, until she meets a carpenter (Kurt Russell) who rescues her, but she has amnesia. He renames her 'Annie' and she becomes lovable, funny and, well, all the things she could not be as a 'Joanna'.
Bridesmaids. (See, I'm current). The heroine (Annie) is down to earth and genuine, unlike that rich girl.
Annie Hall. Eponymous. Looks good in a tie and baggy slacks and a hat. (Annies always look good in hats).
Annie. 'I don't need sunshine now to turn my skies to blue. I Don't Need Anything But You.'
This is not a coincidence.
I have a mother and a daughter. Both Annie. If you made a movie about them, you would have to name them 'Annie'. I am that lucky.
------ ------ ------
Annie Dunne is not Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn or Amy Madigan. She is old, and hunch-backed (she prefers 'bowed') and bitter. Yet I loved her so.
There is something in the lilt of the best Irish writers that soothes me. Yes, even a hard case like me. There is no heart so black that it does not love a lullaby.
A bad man is made to swear as to the truth near the end of the book. There are only two books upon which to swear. One is the Bible, the other the collected works of Shakespeare. Which one would you push forward?
Annie Dunne will linger. I swear.
I submit to you: Annie.
In the movies, Annies are always: cute/pretty/beautiful; perky/down-to-earth; inquisitive to intelligent/well-read; loyal/wholesome; a perfect woman for a good man.
Think about it.
In Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner is devoted to 'Annie', in jeans and flannel shirts, a Berkeley degree, who believes in magic and the first amendment.
Sleepless in Seattle. Tom Hanks will never marry again. Except his son finds him 'Annie'. "You're 'Annie'?" And they hold hands forever after as Jimmy Durante sings 'Make Someone Happy'.
Father of the Bride. Of course his daughter's name is 'Annie'. And they play a one-on-one game of basketball.
Bull Durham. Susan Sarandon is 'Annie', who knows all about baseball and literature and gets weak at the greatest soliloquy since all that Hamlet stuff.
Overboard. Goldie Hawn is Joanna Stayton, filthy rich and insufferable, until she meets a carpenter (Kurt Russell) who rescues her, but she has amnesia. He renames her 'Annie' and she becomes lovable, funny and, well, all the things she could not be as a 'Joanna'.
Bridesmaids. (See, I'm current). The heroine (Annie) is down to earth and genuine, unlike that rich girl.
Annie Hall. Eponymous. Looks good in a tie and baggy slacks and a hat. (Annies always look good in hats).
Annie. 'I don't need sunshine now to turn my skies to blue. I Don't Need Anything But You.'
This is not a coincidence.
I have a mother and a daughter. Both Annie. If you made a movie about them, you would have to name them 'Annie'. I am that lucky.
------ ------ ------
Annie Dunne is not Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn or Amy Madigan. She is old, and hunch-backed (she prefers 'bowed') and bitter. Yet I loved her so.
There is something in the lilt of the best Irish writers that soothes me. Yes, even a hard case like me. There is no heart so black that it does not love a lullaby.
A bad man is made to swear as to the truth near the end of the book. There are only two books upon which to swear. One is the Bible, the other the collected works of Shakespeare. Which one would you push forward?
Annie Dunne will linger. I swear.
July 14, 2022
Annie Dunne is getting old. At fifty-nine her hair is grayed and she lives with her cousin, Sarah, two years her elder, not exactly as charity, because she does the bulk of the work around the farm they occupy, but certainly as a person without property or standing. Billy Kerr is a forty-five year old man who hangs about the place, doing small chores, and schmoozing Sarah, and Annie sees him as a threat, a man who wants to acquire a farm and is not adverse to any method of acquiring it.
Into this scenario come two children, Annie’s nephew’s children, to stay for the summer while their parents relocate the family to London. Their presence stirs Annie’s memories and sensibilities, and heightens her awareness of the vulnerability of her age. There is also an undercurrent of bewilderment about the presence of children in this world of disillusioned adults--can Annie even know what innocence is any longer?
What is this growing old, when even the engine that holds our despair and hope in balance begins to fail us.
This story has a sad, haunted quality from the first sentence.
“Oh, Kelsha is a distant place, over the mountains from everywhere. You go over the mountains to get there, and eventually, through dreams.
And yet, there is something so beautiful and lyrical about Barry’s writing that it soothes the soul. His descriptions drip, like rain, onto the page. I would read him for the sheer lilt of his voice, even if there were no such marvelous tale to hold his words together.
At length against the long impulse of the night I go out into the starry yard to comfort the long ropes of my muscles and the field sticks of my bones. I carry the bed heat on the surface of my skin and the soft breeze of the night shows great interest in me, raising the hairs on my arms.
I took an immediate liking to Annie, who finds beauty in the simple, ordinary tasks of life and in the world of God’s creation. It is this that buoys her and keeps her afloat in a world that has truly not been kind.
The summer offers a general peace, perhaps the very peace that passeth all understanding. God may have been thinking of the Irish winter when he wrote that in the good book. My spirit is altered by the deepening length of the days, the pleasant trick that summer plays, of suggesting eternity, when the light lies in the yard, and Shep is perpetually stricken by that light, the heavy weight of heat on those special days. Hopefully heaven itself will consist of this, the broadening cheer of light as I walk out into the morning yard.
But her peace is fleeting. She is lonely, feels the emptiness of never having married and had her own children, and she fears the position she occupies as someone who has been and can be again easily discarded. She is paranoid, always waiting for the other shoe to fall, and I began to see her as an unreliable narrator, unable to sort through her own feelings, let alone accurately determine the feelings of others.
Barry is a master at building tension with the use of everyday situations. There were times in reading this that I felt literally trapped, trapped as Annie is in the life she has been given, her back humped by polio, always just outside the circle of family and community that she so longs for. She drowns in her isolation and no one notices, because she fronts herself with anger or disinterest, or silence. She ponders how to even tell Sarah, "That always I have expected to be cast off, discarded, removed…my hurts and thoughts discounted.
I closed this one with a kind of sorrowful soul. I suspect we are all like Annie in a way, too much inside ourselves sometimes, not in touch with anything but the surface of the others around us, hoping, somehow, that we will leave a footprint behind, but knowing we are mostly treading in dust that will be covered as soon as we are gone with other footprints, also destined to disappear.
Into this scenario come two children, Annie’s nephew’s children, to stay for the summer while their parents relocate the family to London. Their presence stirs Annie’s memories and sensibilities, and heightens her awareness of the vulnerability of her age. There is also an undercurrent of bewilderment about the presence of children in this world of disillusioned adults--can Annie even know what innocence is any longer?
What is this growing old, when even the engine that holds our despair and hope in balance begins to fail us.
This story has a sad, haunted quality from the first sentence.
“Oh, Kelsha is a distant place, over the mountains from everywhere. You go over the mountains to get there, and eventually, through dreams.
And yet, there is something so beautiful and lyrical about Barry’s writing that it soothes the soul. His descriptions drip, like rain, onto the page. I would read him for the sheer lilt of his voice, even if there were no such marvelous tale to hold his words together.
At length against the long impulse of the night I go out into the starry yard to comfort the long ropes of my muscles and the field sticks of my bones. I carry the bed heat on the surface of my skin and the soft breeze of the night shows great interest in me, raising the hairs on my arms.
I took an immediate liking to Annie, who finds beauty in the simple, ordinary tasks of life and in the world of God’s creation. It is this that buoys her and keeps her afloat in a world that has truly not been kind.
The summer offers a general peace, perhaps the very peace that passeth all understanding. God may have been thinking of the Irish winter when he wrote that in the good book. My spirit is altered by the deepening length of the days, the pleasant trick that summer plays, of suggesting eternity, when the light lies in the yard, and Shep is perpetually stricken by that light, the heavy weight of heat on those special days. Hopefully heaven itself will consist of this, the broadening cheer of light as I walk out into the morning yard.
But her peace is fleeting. She is lonely, feels the emptiness of never having married and had her own children, and she fears the position she occupies as someone who has been and can be again easily discarded. She is paranoid, always waiting for the other shoe to fall, and I began to see her as an unreliable narrator, unable to sort through her own feelings, let alone accurately determine the feelings of others.
Barry is a master at building tension with the use of everyday situations. There were times in reading this that I felt literally trapped, trapped as Annie is in the life she has been given, her back humped by polio, always just outside the circle of family and community that she so longs for. She drowns in her isolation and no one notices, because she fronts herself with anger or disinterest, or silence. She ponders how to even tell Sarah, "That always I have expected to be cast off, discarded, removed…my hurts and thoughts discounted.
I closed this one with a kind of sorrowful soul. I suspect we are all like Annie in a way, too much inside ourselves sometimes, not in touch with anything but the surface of the others around us, hoping, somehow, that we will leave a footprint behind, but knowing we are mostly treading in dust that will be covered as soon as we are gone with other footprints, also destined to disappear.
September 2, 2019
Meet the Irish version of Olive Kitteridge. Both Annie and Olive hate and are fearful of changes in their town and their world. Both can be unpleasant and unpredictable. Both can have a sharp tongue and say things they later regret. Both fear aging and feel life has not turned out the way they had once hoped. Both become more self-aware as the story progresses, and the reader sees the softer side of these very human women.
I read Olive Kitteridge twelve years ago and Annie Dunne is fresh in my mind, so obviously I feel more familiar with Annie. Compassion was something I don't remember feeling for Olive. The root of her bitterness was not evident to me as it was with Annie. Annie lived with a deformity. Recalling her youth she says of her sisters, "They tormented me, and when they were done, they tormented me more. Such was their love."Annie's youth was financially stable, but after raising her sister's three children she faced the possibility of homelessness. She feared having to go to the county home where, to her deep regret, her father spent his last years. "What is this growing old, when even the engine that holds our despair and hope in balance begins to fail us"? Annie's sadness, regrets, and even sharp tongue did have roots.
Taken in by her cousin Sarah Annie finds some peace and self-realization. "I thought I was so safe in my prejudices". A summer-long visit by Annie's niece and nephew bring her a new awareness. Who could not be changed by the love and innocence of young children? "Is there not eternal pleasure and peace in the facts of human love, that overrides present difficulties? I do think so."
Sebastian Barry is such a master. The descriptions of 1950's Ireland are so vivid and real, his characters so compelling. I could smell the churning butter. I could hear the brogue. I was transported back into the life of Annie Dunne and I was very happy to be there.
I read Olive Kitteridge twelve years ago and Annie Dunne is fresh in my mind, so obviously I feel more familiar with Annie. Compassion was something I don't remember feeling for Olive. The root of her bitterness was not evident to me as it was with Annie. Annie lived with a deformity. Recalling her youth she says of her sisters, "They tormented me, and when they were done, they tormented me more. Such was their love."Annie's youth was financially stable, but after raising her sister's three children she faced the possibility of homelessness. She feared having to go to the county home where, to her deep regret, her father spent his last years. "What is this growing old, when even the engine that holds our despair and hope in balance begins to fail us"? Annie's sadness, regrets, and even sharp tongue did have roots.
Taken in by her cousin Sarah Annie finds some peace and self-realization. "I thought I was so safe in my prejudices". A summer-long visit by Annie's niece and nephew bring her a new awareness. Who could not be changed by the love and innocence of young children? "Is there not eternal pleasure and peace in the facts of human love, that overrides present difficulties? I do think so."
Sebastian Barry is such a master. The descriptions of 1950's Ireland are so vivid and real, his characters so compelling. I could smell the churning butter. I could hear the brogue. I was transported back into the life of Annie Dunne and I was very happy to be there.
June 11, 2019
A very moving and often lovely story; intense and exciting at times, occasionally horrifying and terrifying. Barry writes beautifully. Although I struggle with phrases like ‘tired as a wolf’ and ‘pensive as daffodils’, at least his writing gives me pause for thought. This is a book to savour.
The eponymous Annie Dunne is a complex character. She is disliked for her bitter tongue and mistrusted because of her bowed back, the result of childhood polio. Inside though, she is a passionate and loving woman, not at all like her external persona. She is shy and struggles to communicate well, leading to difficult conversations in which she can’t express herself. She is intelligent but no one would know that. All her adult life, she has been dependent on others giving her a home in return for hard work and this has left her feeling insecure and vulnerable. She is proud of her family history, of her father who was a police superintendent in Dublin Castle. She has a deep love of nature and a need to be close to it. She is a complex woman. How many of us are not?
I swithered between 4 and 5 stars before deciding that such a beautifully written book deserves full marks.
The eponymous Annie Dunne is a complex character. She is disliked for her bitter tongue and mistrusted because of her bowed back, the result of childhood polio. Inside though, she is a passionate and loving woman, not at all like her external persona. She is shy and struggles to communicate well, leading to difficult conversations in which she can’t express herself. She is intelligent but no one would know that. All her adult life, she has been dependent on others giving her a home in return for hard work and this has left her feeling insecure and vulnerable. She is proud of her family history, of her father who was a police superintendent in Dublin Castle. She has a deep love of nature and a need to be close to it. She is a complex woman. How many of us are not?
I swithered between 4 and 5 stars before deciding that such a beautifully written book deserves full marks.
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November 2, 20208/10
May 17, 2023
Sebastian Barry is a favorite writer whose worth has been established by his being appointed Fiction Laureate of Ireland, an astounding feat in itself as Ireland is the source for the most musical writing around. Annie Dunne may or may not have its basis in reality, probably so, since Barry has based his Dunne Family series on his own family. This, having been called his "most resolutely rural novel," was a step back into 1959 when Annie and her cousin are facing potential change in circumstance, finding their world of butter churning and pony driven carts was threatened, and having their routine overturned by the presence of two small children left with them for the summer. Told in first person by Annie herself, the story proceeds as a coming of age (despite her advanced years), but also a realization that change was coming, but then, that it always had come. And acceptance of that fact is all. As I've said in other reviews, I love the way this guy writes.
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June 13, 2017There is nothing petty about Annie Dunne. She is, to the core of her being, an angry and bitter woman, but one possessed of a poet's sensibilities and a brave and loyal heart. Thank you, Sebastien Barry for creating this wonderful character and for preserving her, along with her rural Wicklow life, for future generations. I hope they will be able to appreciate her worth.
P. S. Sebastian Barry revisits Annie Dunne in his more recent novel "On Canaan's Side", which tells the story of Annie's youngest sister, Lily who emigrates to the US. In the novel, Lillie remembers Annie as being often cross, rarely smiling and having a very sharp tongue.
P. S. Sebastian Barry revisits Annie Dunne in his more recent novel "On Canaan's Side", which tells the story of Annie's youngest sister, Lily who emigrates to the US. In the novel, Lillie remembers Annie as being often cross, rarely smiling and having a very sharp tongue.
June 25, 2022
This is the story of an Irish woman, around 60 years old, never married (spinster as they would say in Ireland), with a hump in her back, who sees the Ireland of her childhood disappearing who feels isolated and is bitter because she has come to feel isolated and alone in the world, except for her cousin Sarah with whom she lives. One year, her great niece and nephew, both young children, come to stay for the summer.
This is a story of how these young children bring love into her life and ultimately of redemption and acceptance. It is yet another opportunity to read the prose of a wordsmith. Poetic and beautiful, it is a delight to read.
This is a story of how these young children bring love into her life and ultimately of redemption and acceptance. It is yet another opportunity to read the prose of a wordsmith. Poetic and beautiful, it is a delight to read.
December 4, 2014
This starts off slowly -- which isn't a criticism -- spinning its tale and characterization and themes as a spider spins a graceful web. The beautiful, lyrical prose gets better and better as the story goes on.
February 11, 2025
Annie lives with her cousin Sarah, two children of her nephew arrive to stay in their household, as their parents leave for London.
Billy Kerr, a man who does odd jobs, arrives unexpectantly early two mornings in a row to share a tea, Annie wonders why.
And how it became like this.
She wonders about her ninety plus neighbour Mary Callan who lives alone, they share a well, all she has seen and lived through.
Annie's family for 7 generations were stewards of Humewood estate, and lived a life of ease and some kind of certainty in the continuation of that role and life. Until everything changed, her father not a steward like her grandfather but a policeman. One sister Maud married, the other leaving for Ohio, Annie tried to find her way.
When we encounter her, she is 61 yrs old, having found refuge with Sarah, after caring for Maud and her 3 sons through Maud's terminal illness. The shock of having to leave that previous home brings something out in her, fear, vulnerability. She is at the mercy of influences outside her realm of control. She witnessed her father become the shell of who he was. Is she prone to the same madness?
Annie worries for the children, tries to care for them, observes behaviours that disturb her, jumps to conclusions, looks for support and doesn't find it, fears herself most of all.
The book takes place over a summer, while the 4 and 6 yr old children are with them, the first half is rather mundane, the second half rather more dramatic as events ocurr that Annie is implicated in or threatened by. We wonder if she is becoming unravelled like her father, nothing is ever certain in a world that is constantly changing.
Billy Kerr, a man who does odd jobs, arrives unexpectantly early two mornings in a row to share a tea, Annie wonders why.
And how it became like this.
She wonders about her ninety plus neighbour Mary Callan who lives alone, they share a well, all she has seen and lived through.
Annie's family for 7 generations were stewards of Humewood estate, and lived a life of ease and some kind of certainty in the continuation of that role and life. Until everything changed, her father not a steward like her grandfather but a policeman. One sister Maud married, the other leaving for Ohio, Annie tried to find her way.
When we encounter her, she is 61 yrs old, having found refuge with Sarah, after caring for Maud and her 3 sons through Maud's terminal illness. The shock of having to leave that previous home brings something out in her, fear, vulnerability. She is at the mercy of influences outside her realm of control. She witnessed her father become the shell of who he was. Is she prone to the same madness?
Annie worries for the children, tries to care for them, observes behaviours that disturb her, jumps to conclusions, looks for support and doesn't find it, fears herself most of all.
The book takes place over a summer, while the 4 and 6 yr old children are with them, the first half is rather mundane, the second half rather more dramatic as events ocurr that Annie is implicated in or threatened by. We wonder if she is becoming unravelled like her father, nothing is ever certain in a world that is constantly changing.
May 30, 2019
Την άποψή μου μπορείτε να βρείτε και στον Βιβλιολόγο εδώ.
Βαθμολογία: 4/5
Στην αγαπημένη ύπαιθρο της Ιρλανδίας τη δεκαετία των '50, η Annie Dunne, ανύπαντρη και άτεκνη, ζούσε στο σπίτι της αδερφής της και βοηθούσε στην ανατροφή των τριών παιδιών τους. Όταν μετά τον θάνατο της αδερφής της ο χήρος γαμπρός της ξαναπαντεύεται, αυτή αναγκάζεται να μετακομίσει. Βρίσκει ασφάλεια στο αποξενωμένο αγροτόσπιτο της ξαδέρφης της κι εκεί ξανακάνει τη ζωή της. Δύο χρόνια αργότερα κι ενώ φιλοξενεί τα δύο ανίψια της, ένας άνδρας απειλεί και πάλι να της στερήσει τη μοναδική θαλπωρή που της έχει απομείνει.
Το δεύτερο μυθιστόρημα του Sebastian Barry, πολύ πριν γίνει γνωστός με τη Μυστική γραφή, κόντεψα να το παρατήσω από τις πρώτες σελίδες, αλλά ευτυχώς επέμεινα. Είναι βιβλίο χωρίς δράση, αλλά με άφθονο συναίσθημα. Η λυρική γραφή σε κερδίζει σταδιακά όσο ξετυλίγεται η ιστορία. Η Annie Dunne, μοναχική, πικραμένη από τη ζωή, καμπούρα και παράξενη, πεισματάρα και επικριτική, αλλά ταυτόχρονα τόσο γλυκιά και γεμάτη αγάπη. Ο αναγνώστης άλλες στιγμές θα συμφωνήσει μαζί της, άλλες θα απορήσει γιατί, θα την συμπονέσει, θα την αγαπήσει γι' αυτό που είναι. Αληθινή.
Βαθμολογία: 4/5
Στην αγαπημένη ύπαιθρο της Ιρλανδίας τη δεκαετία των '50, η Annie Dunne, ανύπαντρη και άτεκνη, ζούσε στο σπίτι της αδερφής της και βοηθούσε στην ανατροφή των τριών παιδιών τους. Όταν μετά τον θάνατο της αδερφής της ο χήρος γαμπρός της ξαναπαντεύεται, αυτή αναγκάζεται να μετακομίσει. Βρίσκει ασφάλεια στο αποξενωμένο αγροτόσπιτο της ξαδέρφης της κι εκεί ξανακάνει τη ζωή της. Δύο χρόνια αργότερα κι ενώ φιλοξενεί τα δύο ανίψια της, ένας άνδρας απειλεί και πάλι να της στερήσει τη μοναδική θαλπωρή που της έχει απομείνει.
Το δεύτερο μυθιστόρημα του Sebastian Barry, πολύ πριν γίνει γνωστός με τη Μυστική γραφή, κόντεψα να το παρατήσω από τις πρώτες σελίδες, αλλά ευτυχώς επέμεινα. Είναι βιβλίο χωρίς δράση, αλλά με άφθονο συναίσθημα. Η λυρική γραφή σε κερδίζει σταδιακά όσο ξετυλίγεται η ιστορία. Η Annie Dunne, μοναχική, πικραμένη από τη ζωή, καμπούρα και παράξενη, πεισματάρα και επικριτική, αλλά ταυτόχρονα τόσο γλυκιά και γεμάτη αγάπη. Ο αναγνώστης άλλες στιγμές θα συμφωνήσει μαζί της, άλλες θα απορήσει γιατί, θα την συμπονέσει, θα την αγαπήσει γι' αυτό που είναι. Αληθινή.
February 26, 2019
This was the only Sebastian Barry novel I had not read to date, but any devotee of his will be familiar with the families that have formed the basis of his work.
Two of Annie Dunne's siblings - Willie and Lily - have also been central characters in Barry's novels, and the Dunne clan is based on a branch of his own family.
We meet Annie in late 1950s rural Ireland. She is aged around 60, and living with her cousin Sarah on a farm in County Wicklow. The novel catalogues the events of one summer, book-ended by the arrival and departure of her niece and nephew.
We gradually discover that Annie is at the farm as she has nowhere else to go. A hump in her back seems to have scuppered any chances of marriage, and although she spent some time as a live-in substitute mother for her niece and nephew, that came to an end when her brother-in-law found a new partner.
But this summer also introduces uncertainty about her place on the farm too as Sarah seems to be on the verge of an unlikely late marriage.
A word of warning - don't read this novel if you want plenty of plot. Annie Dunne is less about events, and more about character and atmosphere. There is a runaway horse, and hints of potential sexual abuse, but much of the novel is about Annie's interior life.
That makes it suffused with melancholy as she contemplates past disappointments and the fragility of her position.
One of the aspects that makes this novel worth reading though is its depiction of the insecurity Annie faces as a single woman in a conservative and rural society. Annie is left without a role, or a permanent place in the world, and society's restrictions make it hard for her to find one.
Annie is no saint or simple victim though. She is a complex, and at times unlikable character, but you do feel for her plight.
And there is solace in the novel - both in her relationship - though occasionally uneven - with the children, and in the connection with nature and the countryside.
But while Annie Dunne moved me, and did eventually repay my close attention, there were times when it did seem to be meandering, and Barry's prose, which is usually so transporting, didn't seem as lucid as in other works.
This is still a fine novel though, and one with much to admire and enjoy.
Two of Annie Dunne's siblings - Willie and Lily - have also been central characters in Barry's novels, and the Dunne clan is based on a branch of his own family.
We meet Annie in late 1950s rural Ireland. She is aged around 60, and living with her cousin Sarah on a farm in County Wicklow. The novel catalogues the events of one summer, book-ended by the arrival and departure of her niece and nephew.
We gradually discover that Annie is at the farm as she has nowhere else to go. A hump in her back seems to have scuppered any chances of marriage, and although she spent some time as a live-in substitute mother for her niece and nephew, that came to an end when her brother-in-law found a new partner.
But this summer also introduces uncertainty about her place on the farm too as Sarah seems to be on the verge of an unlikely late marriage.
A word of warning - don't read this novel if you want plenty of plot. Annie Dunne is less about events, and more about character and atmosphere. There is a runaway horse, and hints of potential sexual abuse, but much of the novel is about Annie's interior life.
That makes it suffused with melancholy as she contemplates past disappointments and the fragility of her position.
One of the aspects that makes this novel worth reading though is its depiction of the insecurity Annie faces as a single woman in a conservative and rural society. Annie is left without a role, or a permanent place in the world, and society's restrictions make it hard for her to find one.
Annie is no saint or simple victim though. She is a complex, and at times unlikable character, but you do feel for her plight.
And there is solace in the novel - both in her relationship - though occasionally uneven - with the children, and in the connection with nature and the countryside.
But while Annie Dunne moved me, and did eventually repay my close attention, there were times when it did seem to be meandering, and Barry's prose, which is usually so transporting, didn't seem as lucid as in other works.
This is still a fine novel though, and one with much to admire and enjoy.
December 4, 2023
Set in 1959 on an Irish farm in County Wicklow, Annie Dunne is experiencing a period of calm and happiness. Her grand niece and nephew are visiting for the summer while their parents look for work in England. Unmarried cousins, Annie and Sarah, in their late fifties and early sixties, work the farm together. It is a time of change for rural life, and there are many indications that this peaceful existence will be ending soon. The storyline follows the courtship of Sarah by a local farmer, Billy Kerr, and Annie’s mothering of the two visiting children. If they marry, Annie will have to move but has no place to go. Annie can be rather abrasive but is also kind underneath her gruff exterior. This is a character-driven narrative with the focus on Annie. It is a quiet novel and not for anyone looking for action. It is beautifully written, as is typical of Barry’s works. This book is part of a series about an Irish family, but it is not necessary to read them in order as they stand alone nicely.
February 21, 2024
I’m going to keep this fairly concise and short (as certainly I can only see out of one eye 😜)
In short: this is one of the shortest masterpieces I have come across. The deep feelings of Annie, herself, are portrayed in a realistic and masterful way. The book begins with addition to life on the farm and ends with “although we will decay, something of us ever after will remain.”
Barry takes us back to the 1950s in rural Ireland. An interesting time for me as my dad was born around this time.
The plot begins promptly with Annie Dunne and her cousin Sarah, whom live and work on a small farm. They suddenly become carers of their 2 small great-nephew and niece, aged 4 and 6.
Barry has a wonderful way of depicting family prose in the a poetic nature; Which reads very much like Anne of Green gables. There are short paragraphs of singing verses sung by the ‘rabbit man in the woods’ - they are filled with poetic heartbreak (I won’t quote as it may be trigger for those that have miscarried) 💔
Barry has the most beautiful way of describing certain scenes and feelings; these are a few of my favourite quotes:
“God is the architect, and I am content there, sleepless and growing old, to be friend to his fashioned things, and a shadow among shadows…Now among the dark shales of night it stands with its generous, bitter arms (referring to a crab apple tree). This is the happiness allowed to me.”
“Oh what a mix of things the world is, what a flood of cream, turning and turning in the butter churn of things, but that never comes to butter.”
I have read quite a number of his fictional books however I am yet to read his poetry which, considering his style of prose, I believe would be quite astonishing. One of his poetry books is called The water-colourist which sounds utterly charming. Has anyone else read any of his poetry or plays?
In short: this is one of the shortest masterpieces I have come across. The deep feelings of Annie, herself, are portrayed in a realistic and masterful way. The book begins with addition to life on the farm and ends with “although we will decay, something of us ever after will remain.”
Barry takes us back to the 1950s in rural Ireland. An interesting time for me as my dad was born around this time.
The plot begins promptly with Annie Dunne and her cousin Sarah, whom live and work on a small farm. They suddenly become carers of their 2 small great-nephew and niece, aged 4 and 6.
Barry has a wonderful way of depicting family prose in the a poetic nature; Which reads very much like Anne of Green gables. There are short paragraphs of singing verses sung by the ‘rabbit man in the woods’ - they are filled with poetic heartbreak (I won’t quote as it may be trigger for those that have miscarried) 💔
Barry has the most beautiful way of describing certain scenes and feelings; these are a few of my favourite quotes:
“God is the architect, and I am content there, sleepless and growing old, to be friend to his fashioned things, and a shadow among shadows…Now among the dark shales of night it stands with its generous, bitter arms (referring to a crab apple tree). This is the happiness allowed to me.”
“Oh what a mix of things the world is, what a flood of cream, turning and turning in the butter churn of things, but that never comes to butter.”
I have read quite a number of his fictional books however I am yet to read his poetry which, considering his style of prose, I believe would be quite astonishing. One of his poetry books is called The water-colourist which sounds utterly charming. Has anyone else read any of his poetry or plays?
March 23, 2023
An interesting, poignant, engaging story about Annie Dunne, a 59 year old, polio caused hunchback, rural spinster, who has spent her life raising her three motherless nephews. She learns that she must now find another occupation. Fortunately she is taken in by her spinster relative, Sarah Cullen, who is two years older and needs help in running a poor farm in Wicklow, Ireland, in 1959. The life at Wicklow is orderly, thrifty and hard work. One of Annie’s grown up nephews leaves his two children for the summer, a four year old boy and his six year old sister.
The story is narrated from Annie’s perspective. I particularly liked the second half of the novel where some dramatic events occur.
A beautifully written novel about innocence, loss and reconciliation. Highly recommended.
This book was first published in 2002.
The story is narrated from Annie’s perspective. I particularly liked the second half of the novel where some dramatic events occur.
A beautifully written novel about innocence, loss and reconciliation. Highly recommended.
This book was first published in 2002.
January 14, 2008
A simply wonderful read! Not plot-driven -- young brother and sister spend the summer with two spinster aunts on a small farm in Ireland -- but, oh, the writing is positively lyrical. No doubt this guy is Irish!
"At length against the long impulse of the night I go out into the starry yard to comfort the long ropes of my muscles and the field sticks of my bones. I carry the bed heat on the surface of my skin and the soft breeze of the night shows a great interest in me, raising the hairs on my arms."
"God is the architect, and I am content there, sleepless and growing old, to be friend to His fashioned things, and a shadow among shadows."
" . . . for when the dark is broken by the fussy fingers of the dawn we must be up and about."
"Hopefully heaven itself will consist of this, the broadening cheer of light when I walk out into the morning yard. The stones already hot, softened by dawn. The rain deep in the earth seeps further down, and a lovely linen-like dryness afflicts the land. Grass becomes bright and separate, like a wild cloth. . . . You can almost hear the work of the sun on those long, patient things, the buds of the crab-appple tree, the little hinges of the sycamores. How fresh and alive the leaves even, shouting with green, delighting in life."
Res ispa loquitor.
"At length against the long impulse of the night I go out into the starry yard to comfort the long ropes of my muscles and the field sticks of my bones. I carry the bed heat on the surface of my skin and the soft breeze of the night shows a great interest in me, raising the hairs on my arms."
"God is the architect, and I am content there, sleepless and growing old, to be friend to His fashioned things, and a shadow among shadows."
" . . . for when the dark is broken by the fussy fingers of the dawn we must be up and about."
"Hopefully heaven itself will consist of this, the broadening cheer of light when I walk out into the morning yard. The stones already hot, softened by dawn. The rain deep in the earth seeps further down, and a lovely linen-like dryness afflicts the land. Grass becomes bright and separate, like a wild cloth. . . . You can almost hear the work of the sun on those long, patient things, the buds of the crab-appple tree, the little hinges of the sycamores. How fresh and alive the leaves even, shouting with green, delighting in life."
Res ispa loquitor.
November 3, 2023
A book be slowly savored, every word, sentence, phrase and paragraph.
Pg 59 And a darkness passes from his face, and he raises his hand like a proper countryman, and what is that look in his face? Only lightness, the lightness of gratitude.
I said I would give him two of your fine brown eggs for it, and he says, “No, Sarah Cullen, have grace of it.”
Pg 182 I suppose that strange fever of making is upon him, when everything else passes to the second place, and all he desires is the next intoxication of fields and hills and riverlets, of browns and greens.
Pg 59 And a darkness passes from his face, and he raises his hand like a proper countryman, and what is that look in his face? Only lightness, the lightness of gratitude.
I said I would give him two of your fine brown eggs for it, and he says, “No, Sarah Cullen, have grace of it.”
Pg 182 I suppose that strange fever of making is upon him, when everything else passes to the second place, and all he desires is the next intoxication of fields and hills and riverlets, of browns and greens.
December 21, 2011
You should not read Annie Dunne for action or a complicated plot. Sebastian Barry is a beautiful writer and tells this slice-of-life tale in the most lyrical way. Annie Dunne and her cousin, Sarah, live on a farm in 1950s Ireland. Day by day, they toil away, trying to understand and adjust to the progress sweeping across Ireland. This daily routine is upended by the arrival of a girl and her brother, the children of Annie's nephew, who will stay with the two older women for the summer while their parents look for work. The unsettling attentions to Sarah by a local man also threatens Annie's security. Sebastian Barry succeeds, when so many male writers don't, in creating the voice of an elderly woman. I'm always impressed when a writer chooses to write about someone completely outside his realm. Annie is feisty and curmudgeonly but her sense of vulnerability shows through that veneer. She is strong but constantly aware of the dangers in her life--from creepy gypsies trying to break into the house, to runaway horses, to a suitor to Sarah who could potentially kick Annie out, leaving her homeless and alone. That sense of foreboding permeates her daily thoughts. The arrival of the children break the two women out of their rut as they find ways to include them in farm life, as well as entertain them. But then Annie witnesses something disturbing and once more, the darkness descends over her. Let's just say this incident goes above and beyond "playing doctor." I, too, felt equally alarmed by this. But the beauty of Barry's writing truly shines through in this novel. I just have to share a couple of passages: "But her face is smiling, beaming, she keeps turning her head like a lighthouse engine, and shines her yellow smile down on the children." And: "Heavily the old clock tock-tocks in the dresser, it is a clock in fact without a tick to its name, only that old banging tock, tock. Perhaps it was cheaper bought without the tick. Clocks for sale, clocks for sale, reduced price, owing to the lack of a tick." Life goes on for Annie and Sarah--the seasons change and the years pass but their work remains the same. They know they are swimming against the tide of progress, but they soldier on anyway. This passage, written about Annie's brother, Willie, who died in WWI, sums up their dilemma perfectly: "He died in the mud like a beast for us, our Willie, so that everything could continue as before, and despite that he did that, and gave his life, it never did."
February 28, 2019
On the one hand AD is a convoluted tale set in a specific time and place, briskly told without coyness or shame, circling themes of universal significance involving difficult and rather unpleasant people in difficult and often unpleasant circumstances.
On the other hand, the gorgeous writing enfolds the reader in comfort, so that we are not wholly repelled or dismayed but rather drawn in and possibly enchanted by this crabby old woman we have come to love.
On the other hand, the gorgeous writing enfolds the reader in comfort, so that we are not wholly repelled or dismayed but rather drawn in and possibly enchanted by this crabby old woman we have come to love.
March 3, 2020
Barry has a way of making you feel like you are sitting off to the edge of a scene, experiencing it with all your senses. While this is not a plot driven story, the way he creates the characters and peels back a corner at a time to give you a glimpse at their motivations and inner lives is wonderful. This probably would have been 4 stars for me, but there was one element in here that felt jarringly out of place.
July 8, 2009
At least one writer out there is willing to explore the heart and mind of someone who is not a contemporary, college-degreed, high-performing, successful but tormented over consumer who travels to Provence and dabbles in serial mating.
November 13, 2023
Barry's prose leaves me speechless.
June 27, 2018
I expected this book, which was a gift from a friend, to tap the heart strings of my Irish heritage and make them sound lovely notes of appreciation and perhaps nostalgia.
For reasons I can't explain, and despite a character with an Irish anger I recognize from relatives (and admittedly sometimes myself), the story didn't grab me. Perhaps the existence of a new and more prosperous Ireland, or the fast evolution in the rural area where I live, made me feel less compelled by the change of dirt roads being paved.
Smart people have loved this book. I lasted till page 153.
For reasons I can't explain, and despite a character with an Irish anger I recognize from relatives (and admittedly sometimes myself), the story didn't grab me. Perhaps the existence of a new and more prosperous Ireland, or the fast evolution in the rural area where I live, made me feel less compelled by the change of dirt roads being paved.
Smart people have loved this book. I lasted till page 153.
January 28, 2014
Simply superb. This is the third novel I’ve read by Sebastian Barry (the others were The Secret Scripture and A Long Long Way) and he’s yet to disappoint. I doubt he ever will though. I hate to descend into stereotype (although I really don’t do so disparagingly), but after reading just one sentence you know these are the words of an Irish writer, and a very fine one at that. If you want to experience something of what life was like living and eking out a tiny agricultural living in long-ago 1950s Ireland, read this evocative book.
As other reviewers have said, there’s little plot in this comparatively slender novel, although a dramatic event near the end had me forgetting to breathe, so involved was I in the characters by then. Annie, her cousin Sarah and the children entrusted to their care for a few weeks are beautifully and so sympathetically drawn.
Mr Barry has the ability, as he also showed in The Secret Scripture, to completely inhabit the minds of women, particularly elderly ones, and invite you to join him, and he does so here with sharp insight and great humanity.
What this fine book lacks in page-turning plot it more than compensates for in wonderful, lyrical prose that’s best savoured slowly, lingeringly rolling each evocative phrase around your brain – no, your soul – like luxuriating in a long warm comforting bath.
Just brilliant.
As other reviewers have said, there’s little plot in this comparatively slender novel, although a dramatic event near the end had me forgetting to breathe, so involved was I in the characters by then. Annie, her cousin Sarah and the children entrusted to their care for a few weeks are beautifully and so sympathetically drawn.
Mr Barry has the ability, as he also showed in The Secret Scripture, to completely inhabit the minds of women, particularly elderly ones, and invite you to join him, and he does so here with sharp insight and great humanity.
What this fine book lacks in page-turning plot it more than compensates for in wonderful, lyrical prose that’s best savoured slowly, lingeringly rolling each evocative phrase around your brain – no, your soul – like luxuriating in a long warm comforting bath.
Just brilliant.
December 27, 2011
I read and reviewed a Barnes & Noble Nook eBook edition.
Sebastian Barry makes us privy to that neverending internal dialogue we all engage in as we go about our daily doings. In superb prose, which brilliantly evokes Irish speech without the annoying misspellings characteristic of attempts to portray dialects, Barry allows us into Annie's rich internal meanderings: her resentments, her fears, her worries, memories, her delight in the yeasty smell of unbaked loaves of bread, and her genuine confusion when she finds her young charges lying naked in bed with the girl commanding her brother, "Lick it."
Barry brings to life the insecurity of a humpbacked woman who must depend on others for a home and who pays fof the privilege of half a bed and daily food by backbreaking labor.
A great book. A good read. A must for lovers of prose. I savored every phrase by this uncommonly gifted artist
Sebastian Barry makes us privy to that neverending internal dialogue we all engage in as we go about our daily doings. In superb prose, which brilliantly evokes Irish speech without the annoying misspellings characteristic of attempts to portray dialects, Barry allows us into Annie's rich internal meanderings: her resentments, her fears, her worries, memories, her delight in the yeasty smell of unbaked loaves of bread, and her genuine confusion when she finds her young charges lying naked in bed with the girl commanding her brother, "Lick it."
Barry brings to life the insecurity of a humpbacked woman who must depend on others for a home and who pays fof the privilege of half a bed and daily food by backbreaking labor.
A great book. A good read. A must for lovers of prose. I savored every phrase by this uncommonly gifted artist
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