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A review by mediaevalmuse
Days Without End by Sebastian Barry
2.0
I don't remember how I learned of this book, but this might be one of those instances where I saw it at a bookstore and decided to give it a go. Overall, I had very mixed feelings; while I admire the work that went into creating such interesting prose and gorgeous atmospheric narration, I also felt like the story lacked emotional depth and did very little to explore how the characters were complicit in colonialism and racism. I can understand why some readers loved this novel, but personally, I can only award it 2 stars.
WRITING: Barry's prose in this novel is a first-person mix of conversational tale-telling and literary profundity. By this I mean that the style is defined by sentence fragments, casual syntax and diction, and a lack of quotation marks, imitating the speech of a poorly-educated Irish immigrant. At the same time, it offers rich description and deep insight that one might expect from literary fiction. I particularly liked the way Barry described the natural world and the poetic rendering of the atmosphere; it made me think of American Hudson River School paintings, all Romantic, sublime landscapes and rugged wilderness. I found this mix particularly effective because it mixed the mundane with the profound, and it made clear that lower-class people can be just as observant, insightful, and wise as any learned poet or philosopher.
Still, there were some things that made this book somewhat difficult to read. For one, some of Barry's paragraphs could get overly long, spanning two or more pages. While I understand that stylistically, such a long paragraph can convey a continuous, run-on thought, I also felt like some paragraph breaks would have been helpful. For two, Barry tends to repeat certain words - namely, "queer," "caterwauling," and others - to the point where it becomes distracting. For three, this book is not one of emotional depth, which means I had a hard time with the dispassionate narration. Perhaps Barry's prose was emotionless on purpose, but for me, it was hard to connect with the narrator because it felt less like he was psychologically distancing himself from horror and more like nothing truly affected him.
PLOT: The plot of this book follows Thomas McNulty, a 17 year old Irish immigrant who joins the U.S. army during the Indian Wars. Thomas enlists with his companion, John Cole, a boy from New England with whom Thomas is in love. Together, they struggle to survive amidst the horrors of war, which includes violence, cold, famine, and disease.
I think I would have liked this story better if Barry had injected a bit more emotion into the narrative. Though I think some of the prose evokes a sense of awe and terror (due to its lyricism), Thomas himself feels somewhat cut off from the world and from the people around him. We know he is in love with John Cole, but there isn't a telltale sense of longing or affection that one might expect, nor is there much of an emotional reaction to the horrors that Thomas witnesses as a soldier. Perhaps this done on purpose to show how being treated poorly/living in desperation makes one numb to the world, but even so, I had a really hard time feeling like *I* should be horrified at that.
Moreover, I think Barry fumbles when exploring the conflict between the U.S. army and the Indigenous peoples of North America. It's clear from the narration that we're not supposed to sympathize with characters who view Indigenous peoples as subhuman, but at the same time, Thomas and John partake in horrific violence that goes relatively unchallenged. Not only do they kill Indigenous women and children, but they end up adopting an indigenous girl themselves (though they aren't cruel to her, they do take her away from her people). Not even Thomas and John's brief career as cross-dressing dancers was of much interest to me because multiple stints were done as a minstrel show (complete with blackface). A number of reviews criticize this book for being too politically correct while others praise the violence for its "realism." Both critiques feel way off to me for the simple reason that this violence/racism simply had no point other than creating a sense of "historical accuracy." In other words, it seemed to me that Barry was interested in using the Indian Wars as a backdrop and simply describing what happens, but was not interested in the question of what responsibility (if any) does a poor, desperate immigrant like Thomas bear for participating in the colonial project. Perhaps I'm being unfair and there really is something in the novel that explores this; personally, though, I just did not enjoy reading about violence against Indigenous peoples and the blackface was just tasteless.
In the same vein, I think the transition to the part about the Civil War was a bit abrupt. Both Thomas and John enlist in the Union army when the time comes, but because neither character seems to have strong convictions, I felt like Barry was struggling to give his characters meaning without war. I think the transition could have worked if this book was interested in exploring what it meant for someone like Thomas to take on a (white) American identity, but as it stands, it feels like Barry is more interested in writing about the things that go on during war than he is about the motives or impacts on the people fighting it.
CHARACTERS: Thomas, our narrator, is kind of fun to follow purely because of his dialect and method of narration. I thoroughly enjoyed Thomas's humor and little turns of phrases, and I appreciated the way he looked at things like desperation and war. Beyond that, however, I felt like there was very little to him. We're told he's in love with John, but that love isn't shown in a way that makes it feel real. We're told he is attached to Winona, but we don't get many scenes of them bonding until the last 40 or so pages of the book. We're also told that Thomas may be trans, and while I would find a trans character in this setting interesting, Barry doesn't do much to explore Thomas's feelings until the end of the narrative.
John, Thomas's partner, is even less interesting in that we see very little of him. He's alway in the periphery, and though we're told he and Thomas are in love, again, it's difficult to feel it in any useful or impactful way. Thomas even has a line towards the end that says he loves John because he's a perpetual mystery, and personally, I don't find that kind of character compelling when talking about romantic attachment.
Side characters are kind of a mix, with some of them seeming like kind people who are just doing their best while others are horrible racists who should be in prison. I was somewhat sympathetic to the major, who seemed like he wanted real peace with the Indigenous peoples but was forced to fight (until the end, which was disappointing); however, others such as the sergeant and a soldier named Starling Carlton were uncomfortable in that they were clearly racist yet not awful enough to be rejected by the protagonist. I don't know - maybe Barry was trying to show how different kinds of people form bonds in horrible circumstances, but again, I don't see why the slaughter of Indigenous people had to take center stage and with so little pushback.
TL;DR: Days Without End is admirable mostly for its gorgeous prose and atmospheric writing. However, my enjoyment of this novel was dampened by the matter of fact slaughter of Indigenous peoples and casual racism; even if such attitudes are challenged within the book, it wasn't apparent enough for me and I don't know why Barry included these things other than for some sense of gritty realism.
WRITING: Barry's prose in this novel is a first-person mix of conversational tale-telling and literary profundity. By this I mean that the style is defined by sentence fragments, casual syntax and diction, and a lack of quotation marks, imitating the speech of a poorly-educated Irish immigrant. At the same time, it offers rich description and deep insight that one might expect from literary fiction. I particularly liked the way Barry described the natural world and the poetic rendering of the atmosphere; it made me think of American Hudson River School paintings, all Romantic, sublime landscapes and rugged wilderness. I found this mix particularly effective because it mixed the mundane with the profound, and it made clear that lower-class people can be just as observant, insightful, and wise as any learned poet or philosopher.
Still, there were some things that made this book somewhat difficult to read. For one, some of Barry's paragraphs could get overly long, spanning two or more pages. While I understand that stylistically, such a long paragraph can convey a continuous, run-on thought, I also felt like some paragraph breaks would have been helpful. For two, Barry tends to repeat certain words - namely, "queer," "caterwauling," and others - to the point where it becomes distracting. For three, this book is not one of emotional depth, which means I had a hard time with the dispassionate narration. Perhaps Barry's prose was emotionless on purpose, but for me, it was hard to connect with the narrator because it felt less like he was psychologically distancing himself from horror and more like nothing truly affected him.
PLOT: The plot of this book follows Thomas McNulty, a 17 year old Irish immigrant who joins the U.S. army during the Indian Wars. Thomas enlists with his companion, John Cole, a boy from New England with whom Thomas is in love. Together, they struggle to survive amidst the horrors of war, which includes violence, cold, famine, and disease.
I think I would have liked this story better if Barry had injected a bit more emotion into the narrative. Though I think some of the prose evokes a sense of awe and terror (due to its lyricism), Thomas himself feels somewhat cut off from the world and from the people around him. We know he is in love with John Cole, but there isn't a telltale sense of longing or affection that one might expect, nor is there much of an emotional reaction to the horrors that Thomas witnesses as a soldier. Perhaps this done on purpose to show how being treated poorly/living in desperation makes one numb to the world, but even so, I had a really hard time feeling like *I* should be horrified at that.
Moreover, I think Barry fumbles when exploring the conflict between the U.S. army and the Indigenous peoples of North America. It's clear from the narration that we're not supposed to sympathize with characters who view Indigenous peoples as subhuman, but at the same time, Thomas and John partake in horrific violence that goes relatively unchallenged. Not only do they kill Indigenous women and children, but they end up adopting an indigenous girl themselves (though they aren't cruel to her, they do take her away from her people). Not even Thomas and John's brief career as cross-dressing dancers was of much interest to me because multiple stints were done as a minstrel show (complete with blackface). A number of reviews criticize this book for being too politically correct while others praise the violence for its "realism." Both critiques feel way off to me for the simple reason that this violence/racism simply had no point other than creating a sense of "historical accuracy." In other words, it seemed to me that Barry was interested in using the Indian Wars as a backdrop and simply describing what happens, but was not interested in the question of what responsibility (if any) does a poor, desperate immigrant like Thomas bear for participating in the colonial project. Perhaps I'm being unfair and there really is something in the novel that explores this; personally, though, I just did not enjoy reading about violence against Indigenous peoples and the blackface was just tasteless.
In the same vein, I think the transition to the part about the Civil War was a bit abrupt. Both Thomas and John enlist in the Union army when the time comes, but because neither character seems to have strong convictions, I felt like Barry was struggling to give his characters meaning without war. I think the transition could have worked if this book was interested in exploring what it meant for someone like Thomas to take on a (white) American identity, but as it stands, it feels like Barry is more interested in writing about the things that go on during war than he is about the motives or impacts on the people fighting it.
CHARACTERS: Thomas, our narrator, is kind of fun to follow purely because of his dialect and method of narration. I thoroughly enjoyed Thomas's humor and little turns of phrases, and I appreciated the way he looked at things like desperation and war. Beyond that, however, I felt like there was very little to him. We're told he's in love with John, but that love isn't shown in a way that makes it feel real. We're told he is attached to Winona, but we don't get many scenes of them bonding until the last 40 or so pages of the book. We're also told that Thomas may be trans, and while I would find a trans character in this setting interesting, Barry doesn't do much to explore Thomas's feelings until the end of the narrative.
John, Thomas's partner, is even less interesting in that we see very little of him. He's alway in the periphery, and though we're told he and Thomas are in love, again, it's difficult to feel it in any useful or impactful way. Thomas even has a line towards the end that says he loves John because he's a perpetual mystery, and personally, I don't find that kind of character compelling when talking about romantic attachment.
Side characters are kind of a mix, with some of them seeming like kind people who are just doing their best while others are horrible racists who should be in prison. I was somewhat sympathetic to the major, who seemed like he wanted real peace with the Indigenous peoples but was forced to fight (until the end, which was disappointing); however, others such as the sergeant and a soldier named Starling Carlton were uncomfortable in that they were clearly racist yet not awful enough to be rejected by the protagonist. I don't know - maybe Barry was trying to show how different kinds of people form bonds in horrible circumstances, but again, I don't see why the slaughter of Indigenous people had to take center stage and with so little pushback.
TL;DR: Days Without End is admirable mostly for its gorgeous prose and atmospheric writing. However, my enjoyment of this novel was dampened by the matter of fact slaughter of Indigenous peoples and casual racism; even if such attitudes are challenged within the book, it wasn't apparent enough for me and I don't know why Barry included these things other than for some sense of gritty realism.