Product Description

Following the end of the First World War, Eneas McNulty joins the British-led Royal Irish Constabulary. With all those around him becoming soldiers of a different kind, however, it proves to be the defining decision of his life when, having witnessed the murder of a fellow RIC policeman, he is wrongly accused of identifying the executioners. With a sentence of death passed over him he is forced to flee Sligo, his friends, family and beloved girl, Viv. What follows is the story of this flight, his subsequent wanderings, and the haunting pull of home that always afflicts him. Tender, witty, troubling and tragic, "The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty" tells the secret history of a lost man.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7720 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
These days, Frank McCourt would seem to have cornered the market on lyrical depictions of Celtic poverty. But never fear, Sebastian Barry--the brilliant Irish playwright, poet, and prose-wrangler--is here. His new novel, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty recounts the odyssey of a small-town innocent, who grows up in circumstances more bucolic, but no less threadbare, than McCourt's. It's clear from the very first paragraph, however, that Barry means to take a wide-angle view of his Irish urchin: "In the middle of the lonesome town, at the back of John Street, in the third house from the end, there is a little room. For this small bracket in the long paragraph of the street's history, it belongs to Eneas McNulty. All about him the century has just begun, a century some of which he will endure, but none of which will belong to him."

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, Amazon.com

Review
"'A novel that is tender, acerbic, necessary and potent.' Colum McCann 'Elegant, comical, tragical, musical.' Frank McCourt"

Customer Reviews

A Sligoman's odyssey.
What an utterly engrossing read. The tale of Eneas McNulty's early years in turn of the century Sligo establishes an ordinary background against which his extraordinary adulthood is both shocking and absorbing. His days as a soldier in both world wars, a seafarer, policeman and occasional unwelcome returnee to his hometown is captivating enough as a story, but it is Barry's unusual use of language that often had me reading sentences several times over, in awe. Do not mistake this with any sentimental clap-trap about poverty stricken Ireland you may have read before. Sebastian Barry is the real thing.

Intensely moving, and poetic!
Quite simply, a beautiful piece of writing. Barry exploits language and emotions to produce a novel which really forced me to examine all my beliefs and thoughts on life. The lonely character of Eneas could be any one of us!

Another first rate mind-opener from Sebastian Barry
Set in familiar Sebastian Barry territory, this book explores the impact that the creation of an independent Ireland had on ordinary people who had the misfortune to find themselves on the "wrong" side.

Eneas McNulty is one of the many workless young men hanging around Sligo as peace returns to Europe following the First World War. It's a peace that doesn't extend to Ireland. In a decision that is little more than a whim, Eneas takes the only job he can find and joins the "peelers" (the Royal Irish Constabulary). Within a few months his name is on a death list and he is forced to leave his job, his family and his country.

The book tells Eneas' story from early childhood to old age. It's essentially about a man forced by fate to wander the Earth like some tragic Greek hero roaming the seas and battling with monsters. The wandering is real enough and there are plenty of man-made monsters to be confronted along the way: but Eneas' real tragedy is that he isn't a hero - he's just an ordinary bloke who wants to go home.

Barry's writing is, as always, of the highest order. The novel is, in many ways, a companion piece to A Long Long Way. Both novels changed my perception of Ireland and her people; both novels left me in tears (of anger, rather than sentiment). I've given this 4 stars, simply because A Long Long Way is the better novel and I wanted to make that distinction. Nevertheless, another first rate offering from Barry.