I really can’t come up with enough superlatives for the work of Sebastian Barry. Reading Barry’s novels reminds me of why I love to read. Reading gives me a blueprint for life: The beautiful, the sensual, the historical, the smart, the wise, the good, the bad, the evil, the complexities of man, love, and nature—a good book teaches you how to navigate it all. Sebastian Barry’s work does that.
Sometimes in life, “You can be expert in things you’d rather not be expert in.” Sometimes though, you need a set of instructions: “She has written out the recipe…[and] well, that is the purpose of cooking. The great purpose. It’s all about friendship.” The same can be said of Barry’s immaculately crafted novels that burgeon with everything that matters.
One of the intriguing things about Barry’s work is how it always explores what it is like to be on the other side, the losing side, the outsider, “the Other”.
Barry is an Irish novelist, and in On Canaan’s Side, he revisits the Dunne family, the patriarch of which was an Irish loyalist police officer. I first became acquainted with the Dunne’s in his 2002 novel, Annie Dunne, where he took us on the journey of the homely daughter who has no place without a husband and a father. In On Canaan’s Side, Annie’s sister Lilly narrates her own story at the age of 89, and what a shocking story it is. In Lilly’s life, we read the stories of Ireland and America itself in just 256 pages. The book tackles politics, four generations of war, complex race issues, and wallops the reader with a doozy of a surprise. Dense and nuanced, but at the same time a light page turner: It’s rare, and here it is. In On Canaan’s Side, the reader will find gorgeous prose, a great plot, and a body of work that builds upon itself and upon history itself.
The award-winning author of more than a dozen plays, two volumes of poetry, and seven novels, his work makes me want to do a PhD in Irish literature, because I can’t even begin to unpack it here. Meanwhile, my mother emailed me this morning that she wants to buy this house in Ireland with its spectacular view of the sea.
“There is such solace in the mere sight of water. It clothes us delicately in its blowing salt and scent, gossamer items that mediate the poor soul. Oh yes I am thinking the human soul is a very slight thing, and not much evolution has gone into it I fear. It is a vague slight notion with not even a proper niche in the body. And yet is the only thing that God will measure.”
And so I’ll simply say this: Read Sebastian Barry.
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