I had a lot I wanted to say about this book, as I had just finished it, but then I got into a long, work-related conversation with a colleague, and now I find my brain mostly empty of thoughts where this book is concerned. That, perhaps, is a good indicator of how deeply affected I was by it. Mostly how I felt, by the end, was as though I was covered in a heavy smothering blanket of depression. Perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps that was the author’s goal in writing this book. When I read “literary” novels, this seems to be how I most often feel, with the second most common emotion being impatient annoyance. The latter is most common in the ones that I’m not even able to finish reading.

On Canaan’s Side seems to be about grief and loss and the pointlessness of actually making human connections in life, when at the end everybody you loved is gone or has betrayed you in some way. There is some beautiful language and gorgeous descriptions of setting and emotions. The author chose to express some of these in stream-of-consciousness style of run-on sentences that literally went on as long as 1 ½ pages of text. Fortunately, these were mostly confined to the first and last few chapters, with the middle third of the book written in a snappier style that moved the plot and story (such as it was) along in a more tolerable fashion.

When I was a teenager, we had a saying that encompassed all the angst of that age: “Life’s a bitch, and then you die”. That’s pretty much how I felt by the end of this book.

Hardcover version, purchased as a circulation discard from a Friends of the Library sale. I read this for the 2017 Booklikes-opoloy challenge, for the square Trains, Planes, & Automobiles 14: Read a book that involves overseas travel, or that has a suitcase on the cover. There is a brief description of the main character’s overseas journey from Ireland to America, and two other characters journey overseas for the Vietnam and Gulf wars.

Previous updates:
6/29/17 182/272 pg:
Finally, the pace is starting to pick up. I'm starting to think I'll never be done with this book.

( )

On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry is apparently No 4 in Sebastian Barry's Dunne Family series, but No 1, The Steward of Christendom (1995) which introduces the character Thomas Dunne, is a play, so I haven't read it. However, (pre-blog) I read No 3, A Long Long Way (2005) but Annie Dunne (No 2, 2002) waits on the TBR so I am reading the series out of order and need to get on with it so that I am done with the Dunne family. (Sorry about the irresistible pun).

#Digression: With whom BTW I share an ancestor called Patrick Dunne but since there must be thousands of Patrick Dunnes in Ireland, I know nothing about him at all except that he was a musician. As nearly all Irishmen were, with their fiddles and beautiful singing voices. But perhaps he played the harp, or flute, or a cello? I fancy him at a grand piano playing Beethoven, but that's only because I may have inherited that gene...

Anyway...

On Canaan's Side was longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize and won the 2012 Walter Scott Prize, but although I enjoyed reading it, I got the feeling that Barry also was done with the Dunne Family. On Canaan's Side is indeed a lovely book, but old ladies looking back on their lives can be a bit melancholy, and this novel certainly is.

Lilly Bere has plenty to be melancholy about. She fled Ireland with Tage Bere to America to avoid retribution for his work as one of the Black and Tans, and her daddy was able to warn them about it because he was a member of the police force before the Republic took over, i.e. he was in the business of suppressing the rebellion too. As Alice Zeniter wrote so perceptively in The Art of Losing (translated by Frank Wynne, see my review) there are always people on the losing side in any conflict and the risk to their lives is never over even after the dust settles. I am fascinated by societies in transition, especially after civil wars of one sort or another, because the people are sorely tested by old loyalties and betrayals, whichever side they are on. And not just by those with vengeance in mind, but also by their own hearts.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/01/04/on-canaans-side-2011-by-sebastian-barry/ ( )

Best book I read in 2011. Heartbreaking, but beautifully done. ( )

I never know what to say about Sebastian Barry's novels because whatever I say will pale in comparison to how beautiful his books are written, the believability of the characters, and the bittersweet story that his characters experience. On Canaan's Side is no exception. On Canaan's Side is a story of Lilly Bere, an 85-year-old woman, who is writing her story and thinking back on her life. As a young girl, she grew up in Ireland and after World War 1 she is forced to leave her home and family with her boyfriend Tadg after they are added to the blacklist. They flee to Chicago and she thinks her life will be better but the violence they tried to escape ended up following them across the pond. Soon Lilly is left by herself in this strange, new world. Throughout the rest of her life, she is trying to find something that resembles her life back in Ireland, the home she left when she was only a young woman.

As this is the third Sebastian Barry novel I have read, I am always amazed at how well he is able to bring me into the story and sympathize with the characters and the trials they experience throughout their life. The stories he writes link back to someone in his family, either he knew them or he was told only a sentence about their life because that was all his older relatives knew. Either way, he brings these people back to life. He gives them a story in order for them to be remembered in some way. Lilly's story is beautifully tragic but poetic and lyrical. Forced from her home and followed by violence and tragedy ever since Lilly ends up feeling lost after the death of her grandson and cannot experience tragedy anymore. While her death feels a long time coming, the devastating aspect of her death is that she never finds a home in this new world. ( )

elderly Irish woman in service in USA reviews the relationships in her life whilst mourning death of beloved grandson.