Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34706 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Irish Times
'A virtuoso performance - but also a great book to keep you company on long summer evenings'

Herald
'Bursting with strong, well sculpted characters'

Guardian
'A frequently shocking, resolutely unsentimental and quite brilliant epic, as far from the romanticised western as it is possible to get'

Customer Reviews

This book will become a classic.
This breathtaking, heartrending story is a great work of literature that satisfies on every level. With so many accomplished styles and voices. O'connor's mature analysis of a nation in crisis brings characters to vivid life, depicting the harsh realities, the social and political history of the American Civil War. Even the most haunting scenes of violence are conveyed with poetic precision and minute moments of humanity will burn themselves into your memory long after you've put the book down.

The characters are almost wincingly real, flawed and tragic but ultimately, this dark story shows how the human soul is redeemed by faith and forgiveness... though make no mistake, the journey to get there is relentless,uncompromising and brutal.

This book - much like its prequel, Star of the Sea - will deserve and reward with more than one reading. A big story in every sense of the word...I am sure this is destined to become a classic.

challenging, but worth persevering
I've read Joseph O'Connor's books before and really enjoyed the humour in the early ones and then loved 'The Star of the Sea' which really puts his writing on a new level. I found this book a little hard to get into as it's not your average novel. But after a while, I got used to the unusual story-telling and found that it was compelling. The novel has real pace, even though it's 700 odd pages long and though initially there seem to be diversions, it's all relevant in the end. I think this book is a real achievement and I wouldn't be suprised if it wins awards.

Truly a masterpiece
Joseph O'Connor's Redemption Falls is a dense text, frighteningly thick and closely typed. But within the covers is a work of exquisite art.

The novel centres around an Irish revolutionary, latterly Acting Governor of the Mountain Territory in 1860s America, called Con O'Keeffe. The novel comprises legal documents, ballads, poems, interviews, narratives and a host of other paraphernalia associated with O'Keeffe and his clan. The level of detail is breathtaking and the number of voices is bewildering.

But it is the number of voices that will cause the reader the greatest problems. In order to make them all distinctive - which is done with varying levels of success - different devices and styles are used. These include phonetic spelling; lack of punctuation; folksy idiom and many others. This makes the novel initially impenetrable and the narrative very difficult, if not impossible, to follow. Nevertheless, it does become clearer as the book wends its course and it would be interesting to revisit the earlier chapters to see how they appear with the benefit of hindsight.

O'Connor's language use of language is masterful. The straight narratives are beautifully balanced, with an almost poetic feel. Ironically, the prose is sometimes more poetic than the verse. O'Connor manages to use the language to create a culture that sits between Ireland and the USA that we now know. The Irishmen of the Mountain Territory are proud of their heritage, but are equally clear that they are working to an American future, embracing the principles of wealth and slavery as they go.

The plot is at best ambiguous. We are left to form our own judgement on O'Keeffe's morals and virtues. The evidence that is presented conflicts and contradicts in many places. Different perspectives are presented as fact, adding to an air of intrigue and mystery. Often, the background "noise" is so detailed that one is left wondering whether parts of the novel are true - and if so, which parts. By the end, the reader is left feeling that he has uncovered truth himself, rather than having it spoonfed in easy doses. The final epilogue spoils the effect a little, though, by referring explicitly to this ambiguity. I suspect the novel would have been better without the epilogue at all, and even though the last line might raise a bit of a chill, I'm not sure it is worth jeopardizing the rest of the novel.

The shortcomings that I have highlighted are but minor compared to the triumph of developing a character as complex as O'Keeffe, and a society as interesting as that of Redemption Falls. This is truly a masterpiece and it deserves awards aplenty.