Will I love A Long Long Way?

I love all things Irish. I would venture a guess that more than half of what I read is by Irish writers. Every year, my family visits Ireland–from Dublin to Dingle to Donegal. I am intensely interested in Irish history as well as literature.

This book checks off all these boxes for me. Young Willie Dunn leaves his family and the girl he loves to fight in WWI in 1914. On the Western front, it’s the letters from home and the other Irish soldiers who keep him going through the horrors of battle. Willie is able to return home, only… show more.

I think Sebastian Barry is one of the greatest contemporary novelists whose prose unfailingly sings, pirouettes, and enriches. I would recommend all his novels, which take various members of the Dunne or McNulty families over time and place. This particular novel is set in the First World War and follows Willie Dunne as he leaves Dublin to fight for the British, only to find himself caught on the wrong side at the Easter uprising and having to face his own countrymen. It is a brilliant depiction of a young Irish tommy out of his depth in a brutal war, fighting… show more.

A Long, Long Way just broke my heart. The protagonist, Willie Dunne, is a gentle soul, not the typical boilerplate hero of many male-authored World War One books, where the character is seemingly in every major battle doing Victoria-Cross-worthy manoeuvres. Willie is frightened, he is human, he grows up in a slum. In battle, he defecates in his pants out of terror, and yes, he does kill. But he suffers a great betrayal, and towards the end when he realises he has lost someone, his understated grief just undoes me. I also admire Barry for not forgetting this is a… show more.