The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty
by Sebastian Barry

List Price: $23.95
Our Price: $14.19
You Save: $9.76 (41%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.80 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Book Summary Information

Book Reviews of The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty

Book Review: A poetic and powerful work on the dark side of Irish History
Summary: 5 Stars

The title hints at a modern day Aenid, and indeed this Eneas wanders far and wearily, like his ancient counter-part. I wonder if Barry recognized the power of his own voice as he took up the linguistic legacy of Joyce, giving a nod to Ulysses in his text?

But as much as the language of the book is delightful, so too is the story. Barry has taken as his hero someone who has fallen on the wrong side of romantic history. The author does more than redeem Eneas's suffering, he very quietly requires the reader to re-think attitudes about the romantic and heroic aspects of war.

This book is certainly the finest piece of recently written prose I have come upon. I am extremely grateful to Sebastian Barry for sharing his gifts with us.

Summary of The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty

Having handily survived his Sligo childhood, Eneas joins the British Army in time for World War I--and upon his return home, finds himself shunned as a collaborator. Tarred with this very Britannic brush, he goes one better and enlists in the Royal Irish Constabulary. Alas, this move only cements his fate as a marked man, and his father is soon issued a warning: "Let your son keep out of Sligo if he wants to keep his ability to walk." With a price on his head, Eneas commences a life of wandering, from Mexico to Africa to Nigeria (which the moonlight, he notices, "brings closer to Ireland.") From time to time he sneaks back to Sligo and is promptly expelled.

In another author's hands, this epic of dislocation could well be a bitter one. Yet the stoical and simple-minded Eneas is surprisingly free of anguish, and even his constant fear "has become something else, could he dare call it strength, a privacy anyhow." And the reader, at least, has the delightful distraction of Barry's prose, in which the occasional Joycean notes are entirely subsumed by the author's own colloquial brilliance. In the end, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is less a novel than an exhibition of bardic fireworks--a latter-day Aeniad that's actually worthy of the name. --James Marcus

Historical Books

• Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Historical