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"Set in Dublin, At Swim, Two Boys follows the year to Easter 1916, the time of Ireland's brave but fractured uprising against British rule. O'Neill tells the story of the love of two boys: Jim, a naive and reticent scholar and the younger son of the foolish aspiring shopkeeper Mr. Mack, and Doyler, the dark, rough-diamond son of Mr. Mack's old army pal. Doyler might once have made a scholar like Jim, but his folks sent him to work, and now, schoolboy no more, he hauls the parish midden cart, with socialism and revolution and willful blasphemy stuffed under his cap." "And yet the future is rose, Jim's father is sure. His elder son is away fighting the Hun for God and the British Army, and he has such plans for Jim and their corner shop empire. But Mr. Mack cannot see that the landscape is changing, nor does he realize the depth of Jim's burgeoning friendship with Doyler. Out at the Forty Foot, the great jut of rock where gentlemen bathe in the scandalous nude, the two boys meet day after day. There they make a pact: Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, Easter 1916, they will swim the bay to the distant beacon of Muglins Rock and claim that island for themselves."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved… (more)
Love... this book , the story in it , the characters , the style of the author , the portrayl of Ireland and its people , Love.
But , it's not a walk in the park , ( or a swim in the kidde pool) , the first fifty pages or so are a challenge. Jamie'O Neil's style is something all it's own and takes some getting used to. In the first bit , the style is difficult because you are unused to it , and little of anything exciting happens at all , those two facotrs together make for a boring introduction. But I promise you , if you stay with it , you will be rewarded , entertained ,and moved deeply.
O'Neil has a flair for character creation and dialogue. You'll find once the novel is over , the characters and thier personalities linger. There's Doyler , a brilliant , hard working , and unqestionably honourable youth with some very rough edges and a penchant for impishness. Jim , the reticent scholar who grows wonderfully through the course of the narrative , from a shy , subjected boy , to an experienced , deep young man. And then there's MacMurrough a Wildean gentleman exiled to the Emerald Isle for charges of lewdness and misconduct. Originally a bit of a bitter pill to swallow , MacMurrough becomes one of the most memorable , and indeed the most humourous , of characters on his road from boy-prostitue solicitor to "deccent chap" , advisor , and mentor.
The language of the book , while a bit confusing at first , adds believeability and cultural flair to the whole work.
This is a powerful book and very much worth anyones while , though don't expect to get through it without a several laughs and a a few tears...
I found the first third of this book quite difficult, as I don't have any Catholic or Christian background, nor any particular interest in Ireland. The former meant that many of the purportedly meaningful or symbolic elements just passed me by, while the latter made the frequent exposition on Irish independence irritating and the political motivations of the characters hard to connect to. McMurrough was a selfish bore, his aunt was a self-righteous bore and Jim's father was just a bore. The exceptions were the two protagonists, Doyler Doyle, whose youthful socialism I could at least understand and relate to, and Jim, who was a sensitively drawn character who developed throughout the story.
The middle third is dominated by the story of Jim and Doyler, so I enjoyed it much more. The final third gets a bit preposterous, and it still isn't clear why Irish independence is important.
The writing throughout is somewhat pretentious, with the rather clumsy use of a very highbrow vocabulary. At least some of O'Neill's use of words I wasn't familiar with didn't seem appropriate when I looked the words up in the Oxford English Dictionary. There are excellent sections, however, and I would describe this as a promising novel, but well short of a masterpiece. ( )
I hesitated to give this book four stars. For one, parts of it were incredibly hard to get through: The Irish dialect shaped the syntax and the diction in every way imaginable, and O'Neil seemed to want to investigate every character in a sometimes long-winded manner. I also felt uncomfortable when characters did or said things that pushed the boundary, that seemed uncharacteristic, that confused me. I also felt like Jim was a little boring as protagonist--sort of like Harry Potter, an aimless, hesitant, bland character, though brave. (That's not to say that his development as a person wasn't fascinating, because it was--the way he grew to accept himself was realistic and beautiful.) The sex scenes also seemed weird to me, probably because I've never encountered gay sex in literature before.
I loved Jim's relationship with Doyler. I loved the way O'Neil handled sexuality. I loved the language and I loved the characters.
The ending was what pushed me over the edge from three to four. So hard-hitting. ( )
The story of Ireland and the Irish uprising of 1916 by Jamie O'Neill is a coming of age story of two gay boys. It is written in SOC and Irish jargon and that makes it a bit difficult to get into but pushing on helps a and soon I was hearing the lilt. Still you had to guess at a lot of words because wikipedia look-up on kindle was no help. The story of the uprising was well done. I liked the historical aspect of the book as well. I generally do not like reading books with sexual content and this book has that as well. It is a romance novel between two gay boys. Sometimes it is very sweet but there is also details that a person may not want to read. I liked the characters, they were interesting. The most interesting to me was the older man, he is the one that "makes progress in the novel". He is seen in the beginning as a lonely man, isolated, living in his own thoughts of his past and I think he is grieving. In the end, he has gotten out of himself and is doing things for others, helping the two boys in their relationship and getting involved in Irish life. Published in 2001, historical gay romance. ( )
I'm divided on this one it is generally very good. The characters are lovingly expressed and the action vividly portrayed. The homosexual sex might be a turn off for a lot of people, in a movie would give it an R rating, I certainly found it gross. But the general story is quite good. ( )
I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other's necks;
By the love of comrades.-------Walt Whitman
Part Two 1916: ecce abstulisti hominem de hac vita, cum vix explevisset annum in amicitia mea, suavi mihi super omnes suavitates illius vitae meae.
St. Augustine
Dedication
à Julien
mon ami, mon amour
First words
There goes Mr. Mack, cock of the town.
Quotations
'Would age forbid them?'
'Rather youth permits. The not knowing and the slowness of days. Lack of imagination may move mountains.'
I wasn’t being thick, nor mean, he wanted to say. It’s not the time for a boy to be a man. Wait till the war was over.
'Damn it all, MacMurrough, are you telling me you are an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort?' 'If you mean am I Irish, the answer is yes.'
Pleasant to swim in the rain, they say. It would lower your temperature already so the rain wouldn’t feel so cold. It would be hard getting in, you’d have to push yourself, but were you in already, that would be pleasant. That would be a freedom, to be out in the rain and not to trouble. Your trouble in your pile of clothes.
Freedom was never to be given or argued for: it might only be taken.
Did you not look upon the world this morning and imagine it as the boy might see it? And did you not recognize the mist and the dew and the birdsong as elements not of a place or a time but of a spirit? And did you not envy the boy his spirit? For you know there can be no power over him who freely gives what another would take. Such as one has the capacity to love.
The music was remote and unresolved, wound about with slides and those yearning delays, not notes really, but the lingering between. It was like the harmony of another air whose melody he believed he could catch and maybe, had he the fingering, might one day play. He closed his eyes and it wrapped round him, the dark timbre that was breathy and warm; and he carried to black waters where a wave washed, or maybe two waves washed, under the star of an evening. The music ended, but a haunt of it hung on the air like the last heat of a grey fire.
Words were floating through his mind like leaves on a water, and like leaves on a water they sometimes gathered, connected into phrases.
‘I’ll find an island where we’ll live. A small island all to ourselves. There’ll be sand and dunes and cliffs. We shall call it Noman. Do you know why we shall call it Noman?’ ‘Go on so.’ ‘Because no man is an island.’
It’s odd, considering the interminable political plight, but Ireland for me has always signified freedom. A lazy freedom which you don’t really know what to do with.
"Set in Dublin, At Swim, Two Boys follows the year to Easter 1916, the time of Ireland's brave but fractured uprising against British rule. O'Neill tells the story of the love of two boys: Jim, a naive and reticent scholar and the younger son of the foolish aspiring shopkeeper Mr. Mack, and Doyler, the dark, rough-diamond son of Mr. Mack's old army pal. Doyler might once have made a scholar like Jim, but his folks sent him to work, and now, schoolboy no more, he hauls the parish midden cart, with socialism and revolution and willful blasphemy stuffed under his cap." "And yet the future is rose, Jim's father is sure. His elder son is away fighting the Hun for God and the British Army, and he has such plans for Jim and their corner shop empire. But Mr. Mack cannot see that the landscape is changing, nor does he realize the depth of Jim's burgeoning friendship with Doyler. Out at the Forty Foot, the great jut of rock where gentlemen bathe in the scandalous nude, the two boys meet day after day. There they make a pact: Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, Easter 1916, they will swim the bay to the distant beacon of Muglins Rock and claim that island for themselves."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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Book description
Set during the year preceding the Easter Uprising of 1916—Ireland’s brave but fractured revolt against British rule—At Swim, Two Boys is a tender, tragic love story and a brilliant depiction of people caught in the tide of history. Powerful and artful, and ten years in the writing, it is a masterwork from Jamie O’Neill.
Jim Mack is a naïve young scholar and the son of a foolish, aspiring shopkeeper. Doyler Doyle is the rough-diamond son—revolutionary and blasphemous—of Mr. Mack’s old army pal. Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of rock where gentlemen bathe in the nude, the two boys make a pact: Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, on Easter of 1916, they will swim to the distant beacon of Muglins Rock and claim that island for themselves. All the while Mr. Mack, who has grand plans for a corner shop empire, remains unaware of the depth of the boys’ burgeoning friendship and of the changing landscape of a nation.
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But , it's not a walk in the park , ( or a swim in the kidde pool) , the first fifty pages or so are a challenge. Jamie'O Neil's style is something all it's own and takes some getting used to. In the first bit , the style is difficult because you are unused to it , and little of anything exciting happens at all , those two facotrs together make for a boring introduction. But I promise you , if you stay with it , you will be rewarded , entertained ,and moved deeply.
O'Neil has a flair for character creation and dialogue. You'll find once the novel is over , the characters and thier personalities linger. There's Doyler , a brilliant , hard working , and unqestionably honourable youth with some very rough edges and a penchant for impishness. Jim , the reticent scholar who grows wonderfully through the course of the narrative , from a shy , subjected boy , to an experienced , deep young man. And then there's MacMurrough a Wildean gentleman exiled to the Emerald Isle for charges of lewdness and misconduct. Originally a bit of a bitter pill to swallow , MacMurrough becomes one of the most memorable , and indeed the most humourous , of characters on his road from boy-prostitue solicitor to "deccent chap" , advisor , and mentor.
The language of the book , while a bit confusing at first , adds believeability and cultural flair to the whole work.
This is a powerful book and very much worth anyones while , though don't expect to get through it without a several laughs and a a few tears...
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