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Annie Dunne

Annie Dunne

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Price: £4.995
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Annie Dunne is looking at a future where she is totally aware of her lack of physical beauty and personal possessions which had she one or both of these attributes might have found her a husband. Annie is left without a role, or a permanent place in the world, and society's restrictions make it hard for her to find one. The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. At the same time, or in the next breath, tears keep surging up into my eyes, tears of some righteousness, because my mind keeps rising to righteousness. And there is solace in the novel - both in her relationship - though occasionally uneven - with the children, and in the connection with nature and the countryside.

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. What is this growing old, when even the engine that holds our despair and hope in balance begins to fail us"? Although it's set in the 1950s you never get any real indication of that time so that it's almost as if time is standing still and only now and again do you get a sense that things are moving on in the "outside world" and that Annie's way of life will become a distant memory but one that still lingers in the shadows and unkept fields of rural Ireland. In one story, a high school student wakes up to find a Marine Corps recruitment ad implanted in his head -- his first ''brain-mail. But when a scheming handyman on a neighboring farm begins to court Sarah, Annie sees her livelihood threatened and fights back with the only weapons in her arsenal: bitterness and rage.He has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his novels A Long Long Way (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), the latter of which won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. I just have to share a couple of passages: "But her face is smiling, beaming, she keeps turning her head like a lighthouse engine, and shines her yellow smile down on the children. I carry the bed heat on the surface of my skin and the soft breeze of the night shows great interest in me, raising the hairs on my arms. In the movies, Annies are always: cute/pretty/beautiful; perky/down-to-earth; inquisitive to intelligent/well-read; loyal/wholesome; a perfect woman for a good man. Billy Kerr is a forty-five year old man who hangs about the place, doing small chores, and schmoozing Sarah, and Annie sees him as a threat, a man who wants to acquire a farm and is not adverse to any method of acquiring it.

The world of childish innocence also proves sometimes 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 sister Maud took ill and Annie went to help Maud’s husband Matt in raising their 3 sons and looking after their home. Barry's first full-length work (he has previously published short stories) weaves six threads in time and space to create a mystical and poetic tapestry.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The farm demands their attention from daybreak to dusk, and they don't see much of other people -- until one summer when Annie's great-niece and great-nephew come to stay while their parents look for work in London. The tone of this novel is, for lack of a better description, peaceful and nostalgic with a hint of ominous foreboding. The storyline follows the courtship of Sarah by a local farmer, Billy Kerr, and Annie’s mothering of the two visiting children. Both books are wrapped in dark brown paper, and are”…side by side like a set of twins…' on a dresser in the small country kitchen.These plotlines are abandoned unresolved, as if Barry couldn't be bothered to do anything more with them.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
  • Sold by: Fruugo

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