THE TEMPORARY GENTLEMAN

Name: THE TEMPORARY GENTLEMAN
Author: Sebastian Barry
ISBN: 978-0-670-02587-9

by Sebastian Barry ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2014

Grim, even cautionary, from first to last. But, for all that, a beautifully written story of a love lost, and inevitably so.

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Pensive, quietly lyrical novel by Irish writer Barry (On Canaan’s Side, 2011, etc.), the sixth in a series of books whose stories are separate yet connected.

Jack McNulty, the “temporary gentleman” of the title—that is, an Irishman made into an Englishman in order to serve the crown as an officer—hasn’t had it easy. He’s been torpedoed off the coast of West Africa during World War II, been made wiser and infinitely sadder in love, and now, tucked away in a relatively quiet corner of riotous Ghana in the time when colonial is verging on post-colonial, is steadily inebriating himself (“Into the small hours we drank the palm wine”) into obliviousness. As with the consul in Under the Volcano, drunk gringos do not usually fare well in the tropics. This much we know, and we can foresee the consequences, but the strongest part of Barry’s tale is in its visitation of the past, when McNulty falls deeply in love with Mai Kirwan, the rose of Sligo. There, Barry falls into Joycean reveries: “And what I see is an essence which is in itself solo and isolated, but still a woman replete, laden with gifts, musical, athletic, clever as a general, and seems to sit before me, even now, when she is gone, gone for ever, as real as though I could reach forward and touch her, so powerful, so completely present, and so lovely.” Indeed. But why is Mai gone, and why is Jack in near exile at an outpost on the River Volta? Therein hangs Barry’s tale, and though one romantically inclined might accuse him of a cynical attitude toward love, Jack’s actions certainly remind us that a relationship that begins with good intentions so often deteriorates into the idly contemptuous—especially when copious amounts of alcohol are involved.

Grim, even cautionary, from first to last. But, for all that, a beautifully written story of a love lost, and inevitably so.

Pub Date: May 1, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-670-02587-9

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
OLD GOD’S TIME
by Sebastian Barry

- BOOK REVIEW
DAYS WITHOUT END
by Sebastian Barry

- BOOK REVIEW
ON CANAAN'S SIDE
by Sebastian Barry

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992

ISBN: 1400031702

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GOLDFINCH
by Donna Tartt

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LITTLE FRIEND
by Donna Tartt

- SEEN & HEARD
Podcast Will Explore Bennington College Lit Trio

- SEEN & HEARD
‘The Secret History’ Is New ‘Today’ Book Club Pick

- SEEN & HEARD
Jenna Bush Hager Launching Author Podcast

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OF MICE AND MEN

by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 1936

Steinbeck is a genius and an original.

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Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.

This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.