Sebastian Barry
Author of The Secret Scripture
About the Author
Sebastian Barry is a playwright whose work has been produced in London, Dublin, Sydney, and New York. He lives in Wicklow, Ireland, with his wife and three children. Sebastian Barry is an Irish writer and playwright, born in 1955. He is the author of two novels, A Long Long Way and Days Without show more End, which won the Costa Book Award for best novel. His other awards include the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year, the Independent Booksellers Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Works by Sebastian Barry
The Only True History of Lizzie Finn/The Steward of Christendom/White Woman Street: Three Plays (1995) 25 copies
The Newer World 2 copies
Barry Sebastian 1 copy
A Russian Beauty 1 copy
Tysiąc księżyców 1 copy
White Woman Street 1 copy
Boss Grady's boys 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Barry, Sebastian
- Birthdate
- 1955-07-05
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Trinity College, Dublin
- Occupations
- playwright
novelist
poet - Organizations
- Harry Ransom Center
University of Iowa
Villanova University - Awards and honors
- Lloyds Private Banking Playwright of the Year Award (1995)
- Agent
- Derek Johns (AP Watt)
- Short biography
- Sebastian Barry is an Irish novelist, playwright and poet. He was named Laureate for Irish Fiction, 2019–2021. He is noted for his dense literary writing style and is considered one of Ireland's finest writers.
- Nationality
- Ireland
- Birthplace
- Dublin, Ireland
- Places of residence
- Dublin, Ireland
County Wicklow, Ireland - Associated Place (for map)
- Ireland
Members
Discussions
October 2022: Sebastian Barry in Monthly Author Reads (October 2022)
On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry in Booker Prize (September 2011)
Reviews
When a reader picks up a book reportedly about a retired policeman called upon by old associates to look into an old cold case, he can safely assume that it's going to have a fair amount of investigative police work and maybe even some action. That is unless the reader noticed that the book's author is [author:Sebastian Barry|79510], the Irish author renowned for his dense literary writing style and two trips to the Man Booker Prize short list. This was my first time reading Barry, and it show more was a real eye opener.
Tom Kettle is enjoying the ninth month of retirement from the police. To him, the whole point of retirement is to be stationary, happy and useless. But to Tom, happiness is elusive. He spends his days in quiet desperation, mourning the loss of his beloved wife June and the absence of his children. Barry has placed the action of this story not in the seedy streets of Dublin but almost entirely in the tortured mind of Tom Kettle.
Tom's story is a fascinating one, if not entirely unexpected, full of dark deeds spun by a master storyteller. In true Irish fashion Barry fills Tom's head with profound insights that leaves the reader raging at one moment and weeping the next, reminiscent of the line by [author:Tom Waits|101363] “I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.” He also includes some more mundane comments that those, like me, who wish to visit Ireland someday will appreciate.
Although it's not an easy read, I highly recommend this book and anything else that this author chooses to write. show less
Tom Kettle is enjoying the ninth month of retirement from the police. To him, the whole point of retirement is to be stationary, happy and useless. But to Tom, happiness is elusive. He spends his days in quiet desperation, mourning the loss of his beloved wife June and the absence of his children. Barry has placed the action of this story not in the seedy streets of Dublin but almost entirely in the tortured mind of Tom Kettle.
Tom's story is a fascinating one, if not entirely unexpected, full of dark deeds spun by a master storyteller. In true Irish fashion Barry fills Tom's head with profound insights that leaves the reader raging at one moment and weeping the next, reminiscent of the line by [author:Tom Waits|101363] “I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.” He also includes some more mundane comments that those, like me, who wish to visit Ireland someday will appreciate.
It was a pity that eejit minister in the sixties had decommissioned all the little branch lines of Ireland. Not profitable. But beautiful. Not that Irish governments concerned themselves much with beauty. Stopping the blood flow of visitors to a thousand towns.Bottom line: Although this book is far from what I expected, I was very pleasantly surprised. I see now why Barry was named Laureate for Irish Fiction. He's obviously familiar with the old Hemingway line about how to write (All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”) as what flows from his pen is no less than the lifeblood of a nation.
Although it's not an easy read, I highly recommend this book and anything else that this author chooses to write. show less
Thomas McNulty flees Ireland, as a child, after his parents die and his home country is crippled by famines. He ends up in America and becomes a soldier, at barely seventeen, first in the Indian wars and then as a Union soldier.
This is my first time reading Barry, and I was swept away with his beautiful prose. I have read many books, about the Old West and the Civil War and I was impressed by this Irish author's confident narrative style and fine understanding of this period in American show more history.
This is no rosy, puff piece, though. It is a tough, rugged, wickedly violent story and the descriptions of McNulty's time as a POW in Andersonville, will have the reader cringing and sobbing.
I will now be on a quest to read more of Barry's work. Great introduction. show less
This is my first time reading Barry, and I was swept away with his beautiful prose. I have read many books, about the Old West and the Civil War and I was impressed by this Irish author's confident narrative style and fine understanding of this period in American show more history.
This is no rosy, puff piece, though. It is a tough, rugged, wickedly violent story and the descriptions of McNulty's time as a POW in Andersonville, will have the reader cringing and sobbing.
I will now be on a quest to read more of Barry's work. Great introduction. show less
This is the third book running I’ve read with a first person narration [CORRECTION: fourth, but number four was non-fiction so doesn't count]. Of the three, it is by far the most immediately involving, thanks to Barry’s incredible writing. From the opening lines, the reader can hear Thomas McNulty’s distinctive voice:
How's that for an opening paragraph? I loved McNulty’s poetic turns of phase and clipped sentences. They are especially poignant when he talks of the cruelties of the world, of which he confronts many. His life begins in Ireland, where the Potato Famine kills his family and forces him to emigrate. In America he grows up and joins the army, fighting first Native Americans then Confederates in the Civil War. Despite the brutality, horror, and suffering of these wars, the first word I would use to describe this book is ‘beautiful’. It depicts the ways that love and companionship make life worth living in the midst of chaos and carnage. Yet this is definitely not a sentimental narrative, nor is it one that neglects the politics of the time and the damage they caused to daily life for the mass of people. This part, in the wake of a massacre of Native Americans, will definitely stay with me:
McNulty is also a distinctive character due to being a soldier who is also a trans woman (to use modern terms) and married to a man. One moment of levity amid the savagery was the briefly mentioned wedding of Thomasina to John Cole by ‘a half-blind preacher in a temple called Bartram House’. Between horrific wars, Thomasina and John Cole (he is rarely referred to just as John) form a happy family with Winona, a Native American girl. They were part of the squad ordered to murder her first family, something that they understandably cannot forget or forgive themselves for. This family is constantly under threat from the horrific state of America in the mid-to-late 19th century. The wars never really end - after the Civil War is over Native Americans are still being mass-murdered by the army and ex-Confederates still roam around in militias lynching black people and Union supporters. Violence is threaded through McNulty’s life, but so is love. Although John Cole is an unobtrusive presence, he remains throughout and the two look after one another in a touching fashion.
I found the ending, in which McNulty very narrowly dodges a death sentence for killing a soldier to protect Winona, deeply moving. Given that this is literary fiction, I assumed that it would end with McNulty being executed in order to make the story as tragic as possible. Thus the reprieve is all the more powerful when it comes. Barry adeptly allows Thomasina to be both everyman and a distinctive figure. Her life and loves tell both a timeless story of war’s brutality and the importance of family and a much rarer one about sexuality and gender 150 years ago.
What a wonderful novel. While paging through it in order to write this review, I realised I could happily re-read the entire thing immediately for the sheer beauty of the writing. That is a very rare experience and one worth treasuring. show less
The method of laying out a corpse in Missouri sure took the proverbial cake. Like decking out our poor lost troopers for marriage rather than death. All their uniformsshow more
brushed down with lamp-oil into a state never seen when they were alive. Their faces clean shaved, as if the embalmer sure didn’t like no whiskers showing. No one that knew him could have recognised Trooper Watchorn because those famous Dundrearies was gone. Anyway Death likes to make a stranger of your face.
How's that for an opening paragraph? I loved McNulty’s poetic turns of phase and clipped sentences. They are especially poignant when he talks of the cruelties of the world, of which he confronts many. His life begins in Ireland, where the Potato Famine kills his family and forces him to emigrate. In America he grows up and joins the army, fighting first Native Americans then Confederates in the Civil War. Despite the brutality, horror, and suffering of these wars, the first word I would use to describe this book is ‘beautiful’. It depicts the ways that love and companionship make life worth living in the midst of chaos and carnage. Yet this is definitely not a sentimental narrative, nor is it one that neglects the politics of the time and the damage they caused to daily life for the mass of people. This part, in the wake of a massacre of Native Americans, will definitely stay with me:
Same would be if soldiers fell on my family in Sligo and cut out our parts. When that ancient Cromwell come to Ireland he said he would leave nothing alive. Said the Irish were vermin and devils. Clean out the country for good people to step into. Make a paradise. Now we make this American paradise I guess. Guess it be strange so many Irish boys doing this work. Ain’t that the way of the world. No such item as virtuous people.
I found the ending, in which McNulty very narrowly dodges a death sentence for killing a soldier to protect Winona, deeply moving. Given that this is literary fiction, I assumed that it would end with McNulty being executed in order to make the story as tragic as possible. Thus the reprieve is all the more powerful when it comes. Barry adeptly allows Thomasina to be both everyman and a distinctive figure. Her life and loves tell both a timeless story of war’s brutality and the importance of family and a much rarer one about sexuality and gender 150 years ago.
What a wonderful novel. While paging through it in order to write this review, I realised I could happily re-read the entire thing immediately for the sheer beauty of the writing. That is a very rare experience and one worth treasuring. show less
The book surely deserves its place on the long list for the Booker prize. In the hands of another writer, even a skilled one (say, Tana French) the plot would be compelling enough: the horrid abuse of children by Irish prelates, an unsolved murder of a priest decades past, and the inner life of a retired detective who is drawn back into a cold case. Barry takes the story in a compelling and deeply moving direction. Tom Kettle is just retired as a detective in a police precinct near Dublin. show more He lives alone in an apartment annexed to a Victorian mansion. He has little engagement with other people. His life is one of quietude and sadness. He grieves the passing of his beloved wife. He talks about visits and communications with his adult children as if they are current until we realize that he is either fanaticizing or delusional: they are both dead, the daughter from an overdose and his son murdered in America. Throughout the book, Kettle has visions of events and people that are not real. It isn't clear whether his mind is deteriorating with age or it's the revery of an isolated pensioner, or he's mad.
Two detectives from his former department show up and ask his advice on a cold case where a priest was murdered. Kettle is greatly shaken by this, but, after an appeal from his former boss, he agrees to assist. It seems that the detectives have a strong hunch that Kettle may be the murderer. After DNA and blood tests, he is ruled out but he unveils to the reader that the murderer was his wife. Both Kettle and his wife June had been abused by priests in the orphanages were they lived as children. The abuse was horrific and when encountering June's rapist priest on a hiking trail years later she killed him in view of Kettle. Some years later, June, who seems content with her life as a wife and mother, commits suicide in a gruesome fashion.
Tom's daughter, Winnie, showed great promise as an solicitor but becomes an heroin addict, and after a stint in rehab, relapses and dies of an overdose. Joe, Tom's and June's son, is a doctor serving people on a reservation in New Mexico. He is murdered by the father of a patient who died under Joe's care.
The magnitude of tragedies experienced by Tom is nearly impossible to fathom. There is no wonder that he is having difficulties with his grasp on reality. At the conclusion of the story, Tom intervenes to save the young boy of his neighbor who has been kidnapped by her estranged husband... or has he?
The novel is very dark. It is structured brilliantly by Barry. An otherwise ordinary police procedural is in Barry's hands a shattering meditation on memory of abuse and the insurmountable oppression of grief. show less
Two detectives from his former department show up and ask his advice on a cold case where a priest was murdered. Kettle is greatly shaken by this, but, after an appeal from his former boss, he agrees to assist. It seems that the detectives have a strong hunch that Kettle may be the murderer. After DNA and blood tests, he is ruled out but he unveils to the reader that the murderer was his wife. Both Kettle and his wife June had been abused by priests in the orphanages were they lived as children. The abuse was horrific and when encountering June's rapist priest on a hiking trail years later she killed him in view of Kettle. Some years later, June, who seems content with her life as a wife and mother, commits suicide in a gruesome fashion.
Tom's daughter, Winnie, showed great promise as an solicitor but becomes an heroin addict, and after a stint in rehab, relapses and dies of an overdose. Joe, Tom's and June's son, is a doctor serving people on a reservation in New Mexico. He is murdered by the father of a patient who died under Joe's care.
The magnitude of tragedies experienced by Tom is nearly impossible to fathom. There is no wonder that he is having difficulties with his grasp on reality. At the conclusion of the story, Tom intervenes to save the young boy of his neighbor who has been kidnapped by her estranged husband... or has he?
The novel is very dark. It is structured brilliantly by Barry. An otherwise ordinary police procedural is in Barry's hands a shattering meditation on memory of abuse and the insurmountable oppression of grief. show less
Lists
Booker Prize (4)
WBS - Book Club (1)
THE WAR ROOM (1)
Best of 2017 (1)
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 54
- Also by
- 4
- Members
- 9,849
- Popularity
- #2,421
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 520
- ISBNs
- 353
- Languages
- 22
- Favorited
- 36
