SEPTEMBER BOOK REVIEW - DAYS WITHOUT END

On Tuesday 16th September, we discussed 'Days Without End'. A Haddenham Library Book Group full house thumbs up - read it!!

As eleven words do not a review make, I can wax lyrical about Sebastian Barry's wonderful prose: he can say in a sentence what many other authors struggle to express in a paragraph; he's succinct, thoughtful and grasps the essence of humanity in both hands and conjures up Civil War era America before your very eyes.

His characters are alive, likeable and have purpose. He reveals the violence and viciousness of man, where the abhorred "other" is often the same, against the kindness of strangers and sensitively-drawn relationships, so we come away feeling better about the world.

The totally absorbing first person narrative is the voice of Thomas McNulty. If you read it aloud, you'll find his Sligo accent and begin to wonder when the voices of the poor and huddled masses melded into the American voices we hear today. Barry masterfully maintains this narrative style throughout, meaning we see first person the beauty of the landscape as well as the teeth grinding, toe curling horrors of not just the Civil War but the assault upon the Native Americans.

Written for his youngest son's coming out, Barry handles not just Thomas and John Cole's relationship with a matter-of-fact acceptance that any child would hope for - but his light touch also extends to expressions of gender fluidity which is to be totally applauded in a book that could just have been about men and war and dominance.... 'Days Without End' is so much more than that.

Our only criticism, if we had to have one, was the 'everyone lived happily ever after' ending didn't sit quite right... but we are assured that Barry's 2020 novel 'A Thousand Moons' took care of that.

'Days Without End' is a masterpiece - read it!!