A Long, Long Way, Sebastian Barry
A Long, Long Way, Sebastian Barry
16 Rating(s)
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

A Long, Long Way

Author: Sebastian Barry

Narrator: John Cormack

Unabridged: 9 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/11/2022

Synopsis

In 1914, Willie Dunne, barely eighteen years old, leaves behind Dublin, his family, and the girl he plans to marry in order to enlist in the Allied forces and face the Germans on the Western Front. Once there, he encounters a horror of violence and gore he could not have imagined and sustains his spirit with only the words on the pages from home and the camaraderie of the mud-covered Irish boys who fight and die by his side. Dimly aware of the political tensions that have grown in Ireland in his absence, Willie returns on leave to find a world split and ravaged by forces closer to home. Despite the comfort he finds with his family, he knows he must rejoin his regiment and fight until the end. With grace and power, Sebastian Barry vividly renders Willie’s personal struggle as well as the overwhelming consequences of war.

About Sebastian Barry

Sebastian Barry, named Irish fiction laureate in 2018, is a playwright and author whose novels include A Long Long Way, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, as was The Secret Scripture, which was also a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and winner of the Costa Book of the Year Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and the Irish Novel of the Year. His plays have been produced in London, Dublin, Sydney, and New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Violet on December 15, 2017

This novel about the experiences of an Irish private during WW1 didn’t really engage me until about the half way point when it did massively improve. Firstly, I felt the author bluffed his way a bit through WW1 – sacrificing detail to abstractions, which meant I never quite felt myself in the boots......more

Goodreads review by Steve on June 26, 2013

Certain mental images can be a little too vivid. When it comes to WW1, the permamuck of the trenches, the seared throats from deadly gases, and the pants-soiling horror of seeing a comrade’s detached body parts inches away are associations powerful enough to shut us down. There’s only so far we can......more

Goodreads review by Julie on October 17, 2008

This was short-listed for the 2005 Man Booker. I'm certain it will be among my top five reads of 2008. It's the story of a young Irish soldier caught between the warfields of Belgium and the battle raging at home between the royalists and the nationalists. It's the most graphic and revealing treatmen......more

Quotes

“Barry succeeds admirably in creating complex individuals who find themselves trapped in a brutal reality…Beautiful and soul-wrenching.” Los Angeles Times

“The story grips, shocks, and saddens; but most importantly refuses to be forgotten.” The Times (London)

“This is Sebastian Barry’s song of innocence and experience, composed with poetic grace and an eye, both unflinching and tender, for savage detail and moments of pure beauty. It is also an astonishing display of Barry’s gift for creating a memorable character, whom he has written, indelibly, back into a history which continues to haunt us.” Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn

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