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Loading... On Canaan's Sideby Sebastian Barry
  
 anzlitlovers | Jan 3, 2023 |  Best book I read in 2011. Heartbreaking, but beautifully done. (  ) CaitlinMcC | Jul 11, 2021 | 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. ( ) winterdragon | Jan 4, 2019 | elderly Irish woman in service in USA reviews the relationships in her life whilst mourning death of beloved grandson. MarilynKinnon | Jul 11, 2018 | I think this is Barry's best book. Beautifully written and a real page-turner to boot. My only criticism is that sometimes I got so caught up in the gorgeous prose that I forgot to pay attention to what was happening. ( ) GaylaBassham | May 27, 2018 |
From the two-time Man Booker short-listed author of The Secret Scripture comes a magnificent new novel that is the story of the twentieth century in America. Told in the first person, as a narrative of Lilly Bere's life over seventeen days, On Canaan's Side opens as Lilly mourns the loss of her grandson, Bill. Lilly revisits her past, going back to the moment she was forced to flee Ireland at the end of the First World War, and continues her tale in America, a world filled with both hope and danger. At once epic and intimate, Lilly's story unfolds as she tries to make sense of the sorrows and troubles of her life and of the people whose lives she has touched. Spanning nearly seven decades, from the Great Depression to World War II and the Vietnam War, it is the heartbreaking story of a woman whose capability to love is enormous and whose compassion, even for those who have wronged her, is astonishing. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914 — Literature English {except North American} English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.85)
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On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry
Wikipedia in English (1)
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#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/ (