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From Publishers Weekly
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori--that's the line from Horace (later famously quoted by war poet Wilfred Owen) that Irish poet, playwright and novelist Barry seeks to debunk in this grimly lyrical WWI novel. After four years of brutal trench fighting, Willie Dunne, once an eager soldier in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, is still a "long long way" from home. Irish Home Rule seems a distant fantasy after the miserable Easter 1916 uprising in Dublin, which Willie, back in Ireland on his first furlough, was forced to help quell, firing on his own people; relations with his pro-British father, who abhors Willie's equivocal stance on Irish nationalism, have soured; his beloved Gretta has married another man; and most of his original Irish band of brothers have been slaughtered. The novel's dauntless realism and acute figurative language recall the finest chroniclers of war (Willie supposes that dead French soldiers "lay all about their afflicted homeland like beetroots rotting in the fields"). Still, Barry lingers too long on the particulars of the battlefield--the lice, the putrid muck--while failing to adequately develop the disasters Willie must face back in Ireland. As such, this somber novel--unlike Barry's moving previous book, Annie Dunne, whose eponymous narrator is Willie's younger sister--often lacks the nonsoldier human faces necessary to fully counterpoint the coarseness of military conflict, though its inevitably bleak conclusion is heartrending.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Willie Dunne is born in a storm during the "dying days" of Ireland. It is not an auspicious beginning. This novel of Ireland and World War I wears a cloak of gloom and doom as thick as the opening storm. Willie's mother dies young. Willie enlists in the army and fights on the Western Front. Willie's sweetheart marries another, and so on. The wartime scenes are brutally realistic. Throughout this dark novel, though, are glimpses of sweetness and light, such as a scene where Willie's father bathes the returning soldier in an attempt to rid him of lice. Those not familiar with British-Irish history may find some of the personal conflicts and politics in the novel confusing, but nevertheless a compellingly sad, if difficult, read. Marta Segal
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Terrible Toll of War,
By Ian Gordon Malcomson (Victoria, BC) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME) (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: A Long Long Way (Paperback)
There have been a lot of great novels published about life in modern Ireland. Many focus on the country's passionate fight for independence from Britain, or the brutal land evictions, or the sadness of having to emigrate to a new land. While there is still a great story or two coming out of these times, none really compares in power and vision to Sebastian Barry's works. Through very colorful and detailed descriptions of everyday Irish life, Barry equips his main characters with a heroic determination to make sense of their troubled lives. While politics, religion, and social mores play the traditional roles of trying to hold the individual back, Barry's protagonists have the courage to persist in their search for their true identity. The results of Barry's literary efforts so far are a series of complex and cautionary tales that describe the vast opportunities and uncertainties awaiting those who go it alone. Barry's "The Long Long Way" is just one such example of his ability to make his characters come alive. Young Willie grows up in a Dublin that is still under British Rule as World War I is about to break out. His parents are Anglo-Irish, and his father works for the British government as a high-ranking police officer. Theirs is a comfortable existence that Barry regularly compares with the urban poor of Ireland living close at hand. Young Willie grows up trying to understand where his loyalties should lie in a divided Irish society. Along comes the war, and he joins the Royal Dublin Fusiliers on the side of the British. It is during this protracted turmoil that Willie comes to see war as a brutally destructive and inhumane force that threatens to destroy everything he holds dear: his family, his girl, and Ireland. Obviously, the British army is using the Volunteers as cannon fodder which forces him to question its legitimacy, but still he soldiers on. As Willie returns home near end of the war in 1918, he realizes that his former life have changed forever. Britain treats him as cannon fodder; his dad rejects his cynicism about the failure of Home Rule; the Irish see him as a traitor to the cause of independence; and his girl has decided to marry someone else. He will now return to the killing fields of Flanders for one more chance to wrestle with his destiny. There are two especially dramatic moments in this story that showcase Barry's brilliance as a writer: one is the trench scene where the Volunteers experience a deadly gas attack and the occasion when one of Willie's army buddies is executed for disobeying a direct order. Both incidents underscore the futility of trying to assert oneself while fighting other people's wars. As usual, Barry has written a novel that goes right to the heart of who we are as humans: the need to define who we are under fire! Great piece of writing that highlights the author's ability to move beyond what is generally accepted as standard Irish literary fare.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars (40 customer reviews) 41 of 43 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
"In Flanders Fields," A Booker Nominee About War,
By H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Long Long Way (Hardcover)
Willie Dunne, who at seventeen is too short to follow in his father's footsteps and become a Dublin police officer, in 1914 volunteers to fight in the First World War. With beautiful prose that often rises to the level of poetry ("When the snow came it lay over everything in impersonal dislike.") Sebastian Barry weaves Willie's tale. As in every story of war, whether it is the ILIAD or THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE-- the soldiers opine, however, that Dante and Dostoevsky would have written about their plight-- the events are similar: the comraderie of fellow soldiers, the homesickness (much of the fighting takes place in Belgium), the filth, the omnipresent specter of death, the confusion of battle, the desire to live. Even though much of the plot then is predictable, it does not make for a lesser novel. Willie would like to marry and grow old with Gretta. The fighting Irish must believe that God in on their side. They must believe that they will prevail in the end.In addition to the usual concerns of every soldier, Willie also must confront and resolve his differences with his own father over political tensions in his own country as well as his love and betrayal (his soul is "filleted") of the beautiful Gretta. There are many memorable characters (Willie's sister Dolly, Father Buckley, Sergeant-Major Christy Moran) and scenes here: when Willie sees his first death in battle (of Captain Pasley), when he kills his first German, when he returns to Dublin on leave and his father bathes him, when he visits the empty grave back in Ireland of Captain Pasley. The horrors of war of course forever change Willie. He figures out that not King George but Death was the "King of England. . . Emperor of all the empires." His comrades try to define victory. "'You put out a crowd of lads on the field, and the other side put out a crowd of lads, and you had musket shot and calvary. . . And when everyone was dead on the other side, you had a victory. A victory, you know? Well, and that's not the same with us, then is it?' said Willie. . . 'And if more of us is left standing, then they might be calling that a sort of victory. . . Some f-----g victory. . . Some f-----g war.'" Sadly some stories do not change. 30 of 31 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Young men, empires, and mustard gas,
By Dolan Buckley "dolanbuckley" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Long Long Way (Hardcover)
My first novel by Sebastian Barry and the story had me slowing down to read becuase of the double whammy it packs: a deeply personal look at the young Dubliner Willie Dunne at the time of World War I and the precision of language and imagery. When I have book in my hands that has the double hook of story and language, it means it will be a slow delightful read, even if it leaves my heart in shrapnel-like fragments, as this particular novel does.The protagonist, Willie Dunne, is trapped in colonized Ireland while the world wages its war. Fighting in another land while his own country remains under the thumb of Britain, Willie's questions haunt him as he tries to battle in the trenches. On leave while at home, family and internal political events turn him even more confused and strain his personal relationships. Barry could not have composed a better story than A Long Long Way, to depict the intense human dilemma of a young man like Willie Dunne. Irish and Russian writers seem to be able to best locate where things fall apart and how they affect us all. Barry now writes from within that haunting tradition. 28 of 29 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
sad and true,
By Julian Faigan - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Long Long Way (Hardcover)
Don't even consider reading this novel unless you can handle extremes of cruelty, blood and guts - and, most of all, sadness; for this is one of the saddest tales I have read in a long time. Young Willie is very amiable but a bit simple... but he has gained some wisdom by the book's tragic end.Mr Barry depicts the bottom-of-the-barrel place of young Irish Catholics in the hierarchy of Britain's WWI. When this fundamental problem is accentuated by the rejection of his father and girlfriend, the uncomplicated youth senses that his only community is that of his Flanders comrades. Once you are used to the book's lilting language, it sweeps you up in the mud, guts and body parts that are its sad staffage. This is an extremely fine book, but is not in any sense an easy read. |
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