|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 813 Format: Bargain Price Label: Penguin (Non-Classics) Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics) Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 256 Publication Date: April 29, 2003 Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics) Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: The central character in Sebastian Barry's novel Annie Dunne is a woman who has been pushed to the margins, a woman whom life has given few chances of happiness and fulfillment. Unmarried, she spends years as housekeeper for her brother-in-law because her sister is too ill to manage. Her sister dies, her brother-in-law remarries, and Annie Dunne is homeless. Invited by her cousin Sarah, she moves to a small farm in a remote part of Wicklow. As the novel opens, the two cousins share their lives and the work on the farm. It is the late 1950s and rural Ireland is changing around them. Annie's nephew heads for London in search of work and leaves his young children with their great-aunt. Content with her life with Sarah, Annie also finds a new capacity for love in her feelings for the two children. Yet even the small pleasures that Annie finds in her life are threatened. An unlikely suitor pays court to Sarah, and Annie's love for the children opens her up to pain almost as much as to happiness. Annie Dunne is a novel in which few external dramas occur--there is an accident with a pony and trap, one of the children goes temporarily missing--but Barry evokes superbly the inner dramas of his characters. In a society where emotions are often severely repressed and expressed only obliquely, small incidents hint at larger feelings and Barry has written a story in which these are subtly and poignantly unfolded. --Nick Rennison, Amazon.co.uk Product Description: 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 the 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. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Powerful, Evocative NovelI started reading this book with great trepidation, because I knew that I would probably compare it unfavorably, and unfairly, to Pat Barker's wonderful World War I trilogy (Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road. (The Ghost Road won the Booker in 1995.) But The Long Long Way Home has merits of its own: most notably, its potent, elegant writing. I found that I reacted to this novel on two levels. Intellectually, it's nowhere near the quality of Pat Barker's trilogy. It's ... Read More Rating:  - An Irish MasterpieceBarry is one of those modern writers whose prose can be so beautiful that one often stops when reading his books to roll a sentence or phrase around again in one's mind. To savour it a second time. Set in Wicklow in 1959, Annie Dunne explores the relationship between two Irish spinsters who together run a small farm. It uses this relationship to reflect the life of Annie both in terms of her own limitations and sadnesses, and against the changes Ireland has undergone in the previous, tumultuous ... Read More Rating: - MOVING AND CAPTIVATINGSebastian Barry's second novel gives the reader a look at life in rural Ireland in the late 1950s from `ground level' - through the eyes of a woman in her early 60s who has returned from Dublin after middle age to live out her life on her cousin Sarah's farm. Annie and Sarah are spinsters - but while they wonder, and honestly lament, from time to time their lot in life, they are reasonably satisfied with their station. They live together in a small farmhouse with no electricity, no running water, no indoor ... Read More Rating: - Moments of BeautyIt is the summer of 1960 at Kelsha in rural Wicklow where Annie Dunne, an impoverished and proud spinster who has known better times, lives out her days on a farm owned by her cousin Sarah. Annie's nephew and his wife leave their young son and daughter in the care of the elderly Annie and Sarah while they are in London preparing for their family's eventual relocation there. Concurrently, Annie's already shaky sense of security is threatened, testing her mettle to its limits. There are moments of beauty ... Read More Rating: - Annie DunneThis is one of the most beautifully written books that I have read in a long time. If you are interested in the heart of the Irish people you will love this book. It has made me want to read everything this author has written. The lovely cover of the book with the little Irish girl is almost worth the price of the book itself. |
