Annie Dunne

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How does Sarah’s and Billy Kerr’s “understanding” threaten Annie? Sarah and Annie are as close to each other as two people can be, but they see their relationship differently. What does Annie’s “marriage of simple souls” (p. 127) mean to Sarah? What prompts her to put it at risk for Billy Kerr? Two of Annie Dunne's siblings - Willie and Lily - have also been central characters in Barry's novels, and the Dunne clan is based on a branch of his own family. A day of hardship is a long day, good times shorten the day, and yet a life in itself is but the breadth of a farthing” (10). It is a strange chance for happiness for Annie. But against that happiness moves the figure of Billy Kerr, with his ambiguous attentions to Sarah, threatening to drive Annie from her last niche of safety in the world. The world of childish innocence also proves darkened and puzzling to her, and she struggles to find clear ground, clear light - to preserve her sense of love and place against these subtle forces of disquiet. Annie’s passionate observations and shifting moods—rendered in dense prose that’s close to poetry—fuel this fine novel.”

What is this growing old, when even the engine that holds our despair and hope in balance begins to fail us? .” Where has all the days gone? How am I nearly 62 next year and the summers gone that were allotted to me, and days and weeks and years all added up to that amount already? Where is all that time? Where is it gone? We were young one day and that tomorrow came and we were no longer young". The world of my youth is wiped away, as if it were only a stain on a more permanent fabric,” thinks Annie. “I do not know where this Ireland is now” (p. 95). Annie Dunne is a novel about the loss of old ways, but by referring to past times as a place, how does Annie complicate conventional notions of nostalgia? Into this scenario come two children, Annie’s nephew’s children, to stay for the summer while their parents relocate the family to London. Their presence stirs Annie’s memories and sensibilities, and heightens her awareness of the vulnerability of her age. There is also an undercurrent of bewilderment about the presence of children in this world of disillusioned adults--can Annie even know what innocence is any longer? Despite her many flaws, Annie Dunne stole my heart and my empathy. Whether I agreed with her (most times) or not (sometimes), I couldn’t help but feel compassion for her in her struggles with herself – and a world that had moved on with her clinging to its shirt tails.The personification of Ireland of course is an old tradition, and indeed the old woman, or “the hag” as the term went, often stood for Ireland in poetry, even as late as Yeats. But I don’t think I was after such a thing. Ireland as a landscape and a character…that’s an interesting notion. I don’t really know the answer. Sometimes, either in accusation or praise, it is said that I write poetically, but the truth seems to me to be that I listen for how the characters speak and try to be faithful to that, wherever it leads. Robert Frost said that dangerous thing: that he looked after the sound and let the sense look after itself. I suppose as a child I could make no distinction between inert matter and things with a beating heart and have held on to that ignorance. After all it is the apprehension of a person of their surroundings that makes up the material, the banner and the inner pictures of a life. Annie lives in a rich world, in the sense that it has daily sights to see that she approves. Such I suppose is the wealth of people that have few coins, the coinage of things as they are, as they show themselves, like those small animals that are familiar to country people but are like revelations, revenants and miracles to city people, or used to be. Sensitive and alive with beauty, fear, anxiety, and love – I would highly recommend this family saga to everyone who enjoys an in-depth character study that explores the heights and depths of a person living a simple life of great complexity. Sebastian Barry’s overriding concern is with recovering those parts of Irish history that have been forgotten or displaced by official, particularly nationalist, histories. Barry’s preoccupation with the lost stories of Catholic loyalism in Ireland has proved irksome to some nationalist critics, and he has been seen by some as a historical revisionist operating through the medium of fiction. Though his work varies in form between novel, short story, drama and poetry, a device common to most of the texts is the weaving together of separate narrative strands and voices. This method of composition questions commonly accepted accounts of historical episodes and locates his work on the intersections between family and national histories, and fact and fiction. The frequent reappearance of minor characters from previous works as main characters in new works (and vice versa), offers further suggestion that Barry’s writings constitute an ongoing, open-ended project, the creation of a polyphonous alternative history of Ireland through the excavation and reworking of fragments from family history. The murk of the darkened daylight hangs in the room. It is they who own the stormy sunlight outside” (71).

I normally love books set in this time frame in Ireland but this one just didn't work for me as I didn't get a sense of time and place or the characters just seemed felt and the prose not up to Barry's standard. Perhaps he has me spoilt with all his other great novels. Annie, like us all, has been in history, in her own portion of it, so, yes, it is a political novel in that sense. But Annie’s views are not my own. Annie’s view of history, and she was given a glimpse of official history at the beginning of the last century by the accident of being a policeman’s daughter, is based on her own prejudices. Mine is based on my prejudices! I grew up in a bohemian family —my mother was an actress and my father an architect and poet. My father especially I think thought history, politics, and to some extent even family, redundant and unimportant. I loved him, but I thought differently. I yearned for family but couldn’t reach it. Outside of that, one grandfather had been in the British army in the second war, the other was republican by nature and had played some part in the rising of 1916 that he never made clear to anyone. This was just things as they were, unexamined. Later when I started to write it began to seem quite strange, and I became interested really in unspoken things, family members who didn’t fit the bill of conventional Irishness. I married a Presbyterian woman by chance, and that was a further insight into the consequences of difference. Then you notice that the erased history might imply tracts of yourself were simply missing, crossed out. So when I had children, how was I to tell them who they were? I suppose Annie Dunne is part of this, the sorting out of people from history maybe, rather than in history. Still, with Sarah, they are close as can be in the small home, with only one bed to share. Life has become a routine of hard work, on the farm and in the home, but at the end of each day they are satisfied with the life they have, and are glad to have one another.Stade George. Encyclopedia of British Writers, 1800 to the Present, Volume 1 Facts On File. 2nd Revised ed. 15 April 2009. ISBN 978-0-8160-7385-6 Rarely has the precious interaction between the old and the young been captured in such beauty and tenderness…a remarkable novel.”— The Christian Science Monitor In Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner is devoted to 'Annie', in jeans and flannel shirts, a Berkeley degree, who believes in magic and the first amendment. History looms behind Annie's memories, especially that of the revolutionaries who ended English rule in Annie's Ireland. Annie scorns them for having done so, but is her hatred political, or does it come from deeper, more personal emotions? What symbolic role do the historical figures Michael Collins and Eamon De Valera play in Annie's view of her own life? We are blessed in the company of these children,” thinks Annie, “it is our chance” (p. 7), but Sarah describes the children as “shadows,” into which she can’t see (p. 77). How do Sarah and Annie relate to the children in different ways? Do the children come between them?