Product Description

This humorous adventure story is about life in rural Ireland during World War II.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56219 in Books
• Published on: 1992-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 329 pages

Customer Reviews

A joyful discovery
Not a literary work, even somewhat unpolished, but powerful in the authenticity of its setting and the archetypal nature of the story. Very funny much of the time too.

The time is 1939 and the place is Kerry, a remote world of mountain and damp grassland given over to small family farms devoted to raising cattle. No tractors, and transport is by horse and cart. Annual income is crucially dependent on the prices cattle will fetch at the markets you have to walk them to.

Keane invests this world with epic qualities. A disparate band of adventurers overcome many hazards to lead a collection of cattle over mountain trails to a faraway market in search of better prices and a better life for their backward community. Despite the echoes of the Cattle Raid of Cooley (Táin Bó Cúailnge), the hero is probably more Odysseus than Cúchulainn, more a subtle and wily leader than a ferocious and flawed warrior.

As in Homer, he and his men have also to navigate the wiles of various nymphs and enchantresses. The two gorgeous sisters who own Durango, the inn of final refuge and celebration, are surely pagan goddesses. In the end they give up their life of glorious liberty and, old age imminent, surrender to the omnipotent Christian god.

There is much giving up at the close. Characters who have pursued false gods, or not served well enough the true god, find reconciliation, some in death and others in new life. The world is sinking into war and many things will be different when it ends.