At Swim, Two Boys, by Jamie O'Neill
"There goes Mr Mack, cock of the Town".
Publication date: Great Britain, 2001
My edition: 2002
Publisher: Scribner
# of pages: 643
Source: amazon.de used
Back of the book:
"Set in Dublin and near its surrounds, At Swim, Two Boys follows the year to Easter 1916, the time of Ireland's brave but fractured uprising against British rule. At its core it tells the love of two boys, Jim, a naïve and reticent scholar, the younger son of foolish, aspirant shopkeeper Mr Mack, and Doyler, the dark rough diamond son of Mr Mack's old army pal.
Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of rock where gentlemen bathe in the scandalous nude, the two boys meet day after day. There they make a pact: that Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year hence they will swim the bay to the distant beacon of the Muglins rock, there to raise the Green and claim it for their country, and for themselves. As Ireland sets forth towards her uncertain glory there unfolds a love story of the utmost tenderness, carrying the reader through the turbulence of the times like a full-blown sail."
And that doesn't even begin to describe it.Set in a village-like community on the outskirts of Dublin, the novel focuses not just on the romance of the two boys - though here you have one of the most beautiful coming of age stories I've read - not "just" on history - though here you have an engaging, never lecturing take on it and actually learn something - but on the many individuals populating such a tiny community and those living apart from it in the inevitable grand manor, and tells their own individual history and how it all fits together. There's Mr Mack, the widowed shopkeeper who left a successful career in the army to settle down and take care of his two sons after his wife died (just for the record: I resent him being called foolish on the back of the novel), there's Nancy, the lover of his eldest son and the mother of his grandchild, and there's MacMurrough, by right of birth Lord of the Manor, recently returned, thoroughly traumatized - by from war and later a stint in prison for the same crimes Oscar Wilde committed, and by the loss of his lover - who takes on the reluctant role of mentor to the two young lovers, and MacMurrough's modern and revolutionist aunt, a spinster trying to keep family tradition and her modern beliefs in balance.
All of them make this novel a rich tapestry of Irish life and times, written in a sparse style that must often have reviewers make comparisons to Joyce, so here goes. Yes, this novel is sometimes written in a style bordering on stream of consciousness, but never in the meandering, labyrinthine way Joyce uses it. As I said, sparse. If Joyce had set out to write just novels instead of epic experiments in writing, maybe his style would have been closer to this. The Joyce of "Dubliners" might be closest, both in style and subject. But does it matter? Does every Irish novelist have to stand the test of Joyce and Wilde?
In short, I thought this novel was fantastic. The characters, the epic to tiny to epic again scale, the voice, everything comes together in such a good, engaging way that here you have that rare breed of unputdownable (that's not a word, is it) literary novel. I've often criticized the list of 1001 books for its inclusions and exclusions, but here's a novel where I have to say, yes, this one you should read before you die.
Just a short note of caution, it might be better if you already know just a little of Irish history, instead of being confronted with names, dates and politics here for the first time.
And a short bit of criticism because it can't be ALL good, that would be boring: Sometimes the revelations of important names or places read like a "dun-dun DUN" should have followed, a bit too forced, a bit too sensationalist, a bit too "ta-daaa", I hope I get my point across. And the first bit of writing, a very Joyce-ean stream of consciousness description of Mr Mack and his surroundings, is never taken up again, never mentioned, stands apart instead of included in the whole, and I had hoped for more of the same, because those three or so pages are a great bit of writing.
But apart from that, this novel is everything you want from a more serious, literary read, engaging, interesting and emotional while still being a piece of art in writing.