Sebastian Barry’s first novel, The Engine of Owl-Light, is due out from Carcanet next month. He lives in Dublin.
The deck is bedded with purple blooms that wither or disappear under the purser’s footfalls.
The chairs were put out at the start, and now the flying fish match the queer colours
of the stripes. I am close by with a sandwich of lettuces from the huge freezers. I met
an old dame in the dark with a blackthorn stick, a moon in her ear, waning or waxing
she could not say, or I did not ask...
In Old God’s Time Tom Kettle, Barry’s hero, sees the moon rise behind Dalkey Island, and it feels like an eclipse; each time he looks at it, it’s in a different pane of the window. Wave or particle?...
In the great lineage of classical realism from Stendhal to Tolstoy, a whole history is summarised in the fortunes of a particular family or set of characters. Individuals are portrayed in all...
In The Other Garden Francis Wyndham manages a classic form, the first-person novella, with great delicacy and originality. His first person, as in his collection of short stories Mrs Henderson,...
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