traceculture's reviews
381 reviews

Long listed for the 2009 Man Booker, I wanted this book to be good and I even saved it to take on holidays with me. Am, ok, well firstly I like Mr. Tobin. He’s a nice, erudite, well respected novelist, but this is not the first time I’ve been let down by one of his novels. I found Nora Webster uninspiring and The Blackwater Lightship a little lacklustre, however I didn’t want to give up on one of Ireland’s most illustrious writers, so I dived into Brooklyn with the conviction that Toibin’s everlasting reputation would meet my expectations. It didn’t.
Toibin is a good writer: not superb, fantastic, incredible or however else he’s rendered by an Irish media who seem to wheel him out as our foremost literary giant whenever a chat-show needs a foremost literary giant (who doesn’t need the publicity) to tell the masses of literary miniatures (who do) how unachievable literary growth is!
Oh anyway, the story features the young Ellis Lacey who can’t find work in 1950’s Wexford. With the help of her sister, Rose and a visiting Catholic priest, she emigrates to Brooklyn. Ellis works at a department store; lodges at a boarding house with other female emigrants; does some night classes, meets a guy at a dance; yada yada yada and has to make some decisions.
There’s nothing complex about this character, nothing challenging about the book or it’s subject matter and I guess in some ways that was a pleasant experience. Toibin is an old fashioned writer, a male Maeve Binchy, there's a lot of detail and he tells a simple story, simply. I guess his novels are like a place to rest, a safe harbour after the tumultuous seas of excessively complex and mentally overwhelming books on many lists these days. I would certainly recommend Mr. Toibin’s novels to anyone looking for that calm literary healing place.
Colm Toibin’s novels are not what I was expecting, that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy them, just don’t believe the hype.

Some truths but mostly psychobabble

I really enjoyed this book. Easy beginners guide to meditation. Short 5-10 min sessions, so nothing overwhelming. I use the techniques as often as I remember. Really useful when you find yourself getting impatient in queues, anxious in traffic, unsettled in waiting rooms or supermarkets or stressed-out at any time in any way. It's all about being kind to yourself; being more aware of the present moment; mindfully listening, eating, walking, speaking. It's a gentle message and a necessary time-out.

British short story writer Julia Gregson was a new one on me. I traded a Kate Morton novel for East Of The Sun with an English ex-pat I met whilst holidaying in Spain this year. A wonderfully elegant elderly lady who was probably born about a decade after the novel was set so I can see why it would have appealed to her. I enjoy historical fiction but I’m not usually one for chic-lit type novels so I had a hard time finding anything of interest in the first half. The upmarket text and well-to-do characters gave this story some kind of superiority complex that I normally wouldn’t bother trying to work out but I was feeling competitive. The story sees three young women embark on a trip to India aboard the Kaisar-I-Hind. It’s 1928 and the Indian subcontinent is under the rule of the British Empire. Viva, the chaperone, is heading back to Simla to uncover some unanswered questions about her past; Rose is marrying Jack, a cavalry officer she barely knows and her bridesmaid Tor is hoping to find a suitable husband of her own. There’s also another charge, Guy Glover, whom I’d nearly forgotten about because I don’t really get what his role in the novel is. Anyway he’s dodgy and causes more than a few problems for Viva. Each female character grows, not only as women but as human beings.
Although the novel is tedious and quite labour intensive at times, Gregson does have a nice writing style with striking descriptions of the Indian landscape, it’s people, food, colours and smells, sunsets like apricots and peaches, it’s all very eloquent. Everything both kicks off and resolves itself in the last quarter, getting there is the challenge. I warmed to every character in the end except Viva, I just couldn’t buy into her at all and her hasty transformation after Simla seemed a little contrived.
I’m not sure if it’s for the characters sake or for mine but I’m glad things worked out in the end.

It’s 5 stars from me Sebastian Barry! Well done to you! This is a great book. Excellent story, grippingly told, a balanced pace and each chapter a revelation.
Set in the west of Ireland, the story centres around Roseanne McNulty, an elderly patient at Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital and her physician Dr. Grene who has been given the task of assessing and resettling her and other remaining patients, before the dilapidated old building is finally demolished.
Despite the religious intolerance and sectarianism, the abuse and mistreatment of women (all symbolic of Ireland's dark and toxic past), oh my goodness when the prose is this good: intrigue triumphs over despair.
We learn about the characters, their burdens and anxieties through their respective journals. Roseanne, who hides her ’unwanted paper’ under a floorboard, writes that she is ‘… only a thing left over, a remnant woman, and I do not even look like a human being no more, but a scraggy stretch of skin and bone in a bleak skirt and blouse, and a canvas jacket, and I sit here in my niche like a songless bird …‘. Dr. Grene, a sensitive man, is grieving his late wife whom he loved dearly but in later years were ‘… like two foreign countries and we simply have our embassies in the same house. Relations are friendly but strictly diplomatic.’
Roseanne’s testimony of herself is both distressing and unreliable and at odds with that of Fr. Gaunt, (an interfering old priest who has ominously shadowed Roseanne from childhood) which drives Dr. Grene to investigate further. His findings are unsettling.
I have no problem recommending this novel to anyone interested in captivating fiction. It's unputdownable and I wholly enjoyed it. Barry’s prose is haunting, delicate, expressive and proud.
I heart him :)
I’ve got his 2005 historical fiction novel A Long, Long Way lined up next.

Took me a long long time but got there in the end. This is an excellent portrayal of the Great War. The language is quite intense and graphic in places but Barry delivers an incredible insight into the conditions endured by thousands of young men in the trenches of First World War Flanders.
Willie Dunne is an Irishman fighting for King George of England (many nationalists believed he should be at home fighting for his own country's liberation) this makes him a traitor to his countrymen and a dissenting would-be deserter in the eyes of the English army. We meet the young Willie before he joins the Dublin Fusiliers and track his progress from trainee to war exhausted soldier. His tragic relationship with his father; the bonds he forms with fellow comrades; his rapport with regiment captains and his love for Gretta and young sisters reaffirm the innocence, the normalcy, the humanity of this young character, haplessly embroiled in a conflict of such inhumanity.
The graphic detailing of the massacres, the filthy conditions, the mud, blood obscenity and violence makes for testing reading but reality can be demanding. I'm not a fan of war literature so this doesn't get 5 stars from me, but the writing is faultless, a pleasure to read. Recommended.

I said to myself “Tracy, let’s get magical!” as I settled down to read this novel, “I’m not a fuddy duddy” I thought, “I can do whimsy“. Turns out I can’t. This book nearly broke my eyes. For a time I thought I was doing reading wrong! - I mean it had all the magnificent exquisite hype and best-selling headlines etc., so I persevered because once I start a book I feel I have to finish it, like a bar of chocolate or at one time a bottle of wine.
Anyway, oh yes just to say that for me personally, author photo’s simply spoil the enigma of the story and having Burton’s ‘Hey look at me being a cutesy author in my twee yellow dress’ face emblazoned on my brain every time I picked up the book didn’t help either.
So The Miniaturist, off you go, mesmerise me!
I think Burton had a good idea and then got lost/bored/confused/tired because the miniaturist in question didn’t have the role we were lead to believe she would and she wasn’t the only character who went missing or failed to get fleshed out in any believable fashion. In Burton’s defence, some of the writing is beautiful, descriptions of the city of Amsterdam are transporting, there is a certain amount of mystery and a little suspense.
As a debut, it’s good but I don’t know who I would recommend this book to, all I can say is that you won’t always dread reading it.

Another book I’ve longed to see the back of. Notes From A Stupid, Invisible, Yawn Fest Of An Exhibition. Stephen Fry was wrong! I don’t know where he got ‘pure perfection’ from (probably pulled it out of his ass or off one of those Darwinian Apple trees he lives under ... lucky apples) The only character worth anything doesn't appear until the last few pages. It’s a boring story with boring people doing boring things. Read it if you will.

Interesting but stopped short of sharing genuine poetry writing tips + skills, the 'rules of the dance' as it were. Felt the authors a bit arrogant, self-important and inhospitable - something poetry is not.