Annie Dunne

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A lot happens in this short novel, good and bad, as these old ladies try to navigate their small world, deal with 2 small children left with them for the summer, emotional upheavals, love in all its guises, and old memories and guilts. Ben,'' a 1972 ''Willard'' sequel, was named after a rodent so special that Michael Jackson sang an Oscar-nominated song to him. Having read Barry’s two latter novels — the brilliant A Long Long Way (which, incidentally, features characters introduced in Annie Dunne) and the slightly flawed The Secret Scripture — I had high expectations for this one. His writing is partly stream of consciousness in style, and the other two books were a little difficult to follow at times. Mr Barry has the ability, as he also showed in The Secret Scripture, to completely inhabit the minds of women, particularly elderly ones, and invite you to join him, and he does so here with sharp insight and great humanity.

This is the story of an Irish woman, around 60 years old, never married (spinster as they would say in Ireland), with a hump in her back, who sees the Ireland of her childhood disappearing who feels isolated and is bitter because she has come to feel isolated and alone in the world, except for her cousin Sarah with whom she lives. But while Annie Dunne moved me, and did eventually repay my close attention, there were times when it did seem to be meandering, and Barry's prose, which is usually so transporting, didn't seem as lucid as in other works.The latest novel from Barry (The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty) is a lyrical but ironic period story. Then Rooney elaborates: "She tries to pronounce this in a way that communicates several things: apology, painful embarrassment, some additional pained embarrassment that serves to ironise and dilute the painful kind, a sense that she knows she will be forgiven or is already, a desire not to 'make a big deal. In superb prose, which brilliantly evokes Irish speech without the annoying misspellings characteristic of attempts to portray dialects, Barry allows us into Annie's rich internal meanderings: her resentments, her fears, her worries, memories, her delight in the yeasty smell of unbaked loaves of bread, and her genuine confusion when she finds her young charges lying naked in bed with the girl commanding her brother, "Lick it.

Annie’s memories are filled with the memories of her young days, when there was more regard for the ways of others, a sense of permanence that seems to have disappeared, and a grander way of life. Their space is invaded by two young relatives who have their own difficulties and they challenge accepte norms.

At fifty-nine her hair is grayed and she lives with her cousin, Sarah, two years her elder, not exactly as charity, because she does the bulk of the work around the farm they occupy, but certainly as a person without property or standing. Can Annie manage the children, quell her own fears, doubts, and surfacing anger—and also survive the vile taunts that Billy Kerr throws at her secretly for her privileged family past. She ponders how to even tell Sarah, " That always I have expected to be cast off, discarded, removed…my hurts and thoughts discounted.

When summer arrives, Annie’s widowed nephew brings his two children to stay for the summer so he and his new wife begin to turn their new house into a home. What this fine book lacks in page-turning plot it more than compensates for in wonderful, lyrical prose that’s best savoured slowly, lingeringly rolling each evocative phrase around your brain – no, your soul – like luxuriating in a long warm comforting bath. This passage, written about Annie's brother, Willie, who died in WWI, sums up their dilemma perfectly: "He died in the mud like a beast for us, our Willie, so that everything could continue as before, and despite that he did that, and gave his life, it never did. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.Both become more self-aware as the story progresses, and the reader sees the softer side of these very human women. I normally love books set in this time frame in Ireland but this one just didn't work for me as I didn't get a sense of time and place or the characters just seemed felt and the prose not up to Barry's standard. This compassionate portrait of a distraught woman mourning the years of promise and dreams that were "narrowed by the empty hand of possibility" is a masterful feat of characterization, all the more vivid against the backdrop of rural Ireland in the 1950s, undergoing changes that throw Annie's life into sharper focus.

When Annie's nephew and his wife are set to go to London, their two small children are brought down to spend the summer with them. This daily routine is upended by the arrival of a girl and her brother, the children of Annie's nephew, who will stay with the two older women for the summer while their parents look for work. She ended up living with her cousin Sara near the place where many of her relatives grew up, and when Matt’s young grandchildren came for a visit while their parents set up their new home in London, Annie was overjoyed. Life has become a routine of hard work, on the farm and in the home, but at the end of each day they are satisfied with the life they have, and are glad to have one another.

Fortunately she is taken in by her spinster relative, Sarah Cullen, who is two years older and needs help in running a poor farm in Wicklow, Ireland, in 1959.