Kevin Barry (1) (1969–)

A story about the Irish in nineteenth century Western America, which reminds me slightly of Sebastian Barry’s Days without End. We are introduced to two characters:
• Tom Rourke, aged 29 in 1891. He writes songs for the bars and letters for the lonesome. He is assistant to the photographer Lonegan Crane, a lunatic, of Leytonstone, East London, originally.
• Polly Gillespie, aged 31, comes out to Butte as a correspondence bride for a fifty year old mine supervisor, but only lasts a few weeks of marriage before she links up with Tom.
Realising there is no future for them in Butte, they elope, leaving vaguely for San Francisco.
There is pursuit and there are shenanigans, described in picaresque fashion. The language may occasionally be contrived, and once or twice meta, but it is melodious and worked well for me, in keeping with the style of the novel.
I’ve read Barry’s City of Bohane, and although that is noir set in a future Irish city, and this is set in a historical American west, there are similarities in the overall effect, which I enjoy.

I enjoyed that the night was a great silent stage. The story could turn in any direction yet.

I received a Netgalley copy of this book, but this review is my honest opinion.… (more)

I’m not sure that I would have read this book if I hadn’t already read and enjoyed several of Barry’s short story collections, so be prepared to give it a good go to get into its rhythm and language.

Bohane, a city in West coast Ireland, divided into four areas - Back Trace, Northside Rises (Norrie), Smoketown and New Town, with the Big Nothin’ as the rural beyond. Characters include:
• Logan Hartnett (aka the Albino, aka the Long Fella), from the Back Trace, the man of the moment in this mean city
• Gant Broderick, from the Big Nothin’, the gangster returning after twenty five years, whose heart has been hurt
• The Cusacks, from the Northside Rises, gunning for Hartnett
• Miss Jenni Ching, from Smoketown, playing the long game
Set in 2053-54, futuristic Irish noir - is that a thing? Barry makes it so.

It’s very seedy and very foul mouthed, with low down newsmen and middlemen moving the story forward through a year of changing allegiances. With language that sings in its newness but familiarity, and a future time that has degenerated from our own.
And it’s fun, with little conceits and jokes, such as Barry invoking the Norrie tower blocks in chapter 4: Got the MacNiece, the Kavanagh, the Heaney.

It’s just a good time story of the turning of the wheel, in the city Bohane.… (more)

"She spoke hardly at all of home or family. Her name was really Katarzyna, she said, but since childhood she had preferred the English version—Poland was crawling with Katarzynas. The small extent of her belongings was sorrowful. They didn’t take up a quarter of the space in the back of his van. He thought the heart was going to explode in his chest as he watched her shyly fold away her underwear in the drawer he had cleared for her. He came in close behind and kissed her neck. She sighed at his kiss as though in sadness but turned and held him and told him that she loved him, and Seamie Ferris was sucked through a hole in the universe."… (more)