[.ca] Annie Dunne (ISBN 0142002879)

From Amazon.com:
The central character in Sebastian Barry's novel Annie Dunne is a woman who has been pushed to the margins, a woman whom life has given few chances of happiness and fulfillment. Unmarried, she spends years as housekeeper for her brother-in-law because her sister is too ill to manage. Her sister dies, her brother-in-law remarries, and Annie Dunne is homeless. Invited by her cousin Sarah, she moves to a small farm in a remote part of Wicklow. As the novel opens, the two cousins share their lives and the work on the farm. It is the late 1950s and rural Ireland is changing around them. Annie's nephew heads for London in search of work and leaves his young children with their great-aunt. Content with her life with Sarah, Annie also finds a new capacity for love in her feelings for the two children. Yet even the small pleasures that Annie finds in her life are threatened. An unlikely suitor pays court to Sarah, and Annie's love for the children opens her up to pain almost as much as to happiness. Annie Dunne is a novel in which few external dramas occur--there is an accident with a pony and trap, one of the children goes temporarily missing--but Barry evokes superbly the inner dramas of his characters. In a society where emotions are often severely repressed and expressed only obliquely, small incidents hint at larger feelings and Barry has written a story in which these are subtly and poignantly unfolded. --Nick Rennison, Amazon.co.uk

Moments of Beauty:
It is the summer of 1960 at Kelsha in rural Wicklow where Annie Dunne, an impoverished and proud spinster who has known better times, lives out her days on a farm owned by her cousin Sarah. Annie's nephew and his wife leave their young son and daughter in the care of the elderly Annie and Sarah while they are in London preparing for their family's eventual relocation there. Concurrently, Annie's already shaky sense of security is threatened, testing her mettle to its limits. There are moments of beauty in this story, bolstered by the fulsomeness of Barry's writing. Barry justifies his prose: "If you listen carefully for how people are talking to you in Ireland, in certain districts, it is quite elaborate, there is a strangeness to it." An interesting aside is that Annie Dunne was a real person: the author's father's aunt and, in his boyhood, his "favorite person on God's earth." And, like the boy in the story, Barry lived with her at Kelsha one summer in his youth.

MOVING AND CAPTIVATING:
Sebastian Barry's second novel gives the reader a look at life in rural Ireland in the late 1950s from 'ground level' - through the eyes of a woman in her early 60s who has returned from Dublin after middle age to live out her life on her cousin Sarah's farm. Annie and Sarah are spinsters - but while they wonder, and honestly lament, from time to time their lot in life, they are reasonably satisfied with their station. They live together in a small farmhouse with no electricity, no running water, no indoor plumbing. They are honest, good-hearted people - but not without their faults and quirks (which loom larger in their own eyes than in the eyes of others). One summer, Annie's nephew - who is in the process of relocating his family to London - drops off his son (4) and daughter (6) to stay with Annie and Sarah for the summer. The presence of the two children is both a joy and an awful responsibility to the two older women - and over the course of their stay, their addition to the household, along with other events, cause Annie to doubt the stability of her own future with Sarah. Barry's characters are all very well-developed - each of them veritably leaps off the page into the mind of the reader. Told from Annie's perspective - and making the reader privy to her very thoughts - the story unfolds with many emotional and psychological, as well as social, aspects. The tale marches along at a leisurely pace, picking up steam (as it should) near the end. The language Barry employs is a gift - a rare glimpse (for those of us who have never been blessed to travel to Ireland) into the lives of these women and their neighbors. This novel is a remarkable testament to the resilience of the human spirit, the ties of family and neighbors, and the healing power of even the simplest form of love and acceptance.

Sebastian Barry continues to impress.:
With this, only his second novel, Sebastian Barry has become one of my favorite writers. Like "The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty," "Annie Dunne" is sublime and engaging. Barry's writing is simply beautiful, and his characters are subtley charming and absorbing. Though very little happens in the novel, Barry depicts an old woman's emotions and fears with profundity, and her sense of peril is very real. In my opinion Barry already outranks Doyle, McCabe, McCourt and Toibin as Ireland's best.

Annie Dunne:
This is one of the most beautifully written books that I have read in a long time. If you are interested in the heart of the Irish people you will love this book. It has made me want to read everything this author has written. The lovely cover of the book with the little Irish girl is almost worth the price of the book itself.

A trip to Ireland:
ANNIE DUNNE by Sebastian Barry ANNIE DUNNE by Sebastian Barry is a book about an elderly woman and her observations on her life, past, present and future. The actual story takes place during one summer in the 1950's in a rural area of Ireland called Wicklow. However, through the ramblings in her mind, the reader is taken back to her past, where she goes over memories of her dear father, whom she has on a pedestal. Her grand niece and nephew have come to stay for the summer, and so Annie and her cousin Sarah must deal with a big change. Taking care of children isn't easy, especially for two elderly spinster ladies such as Annie and Sarah. However, the children take to Annie as it was meant to be, while Sarah hovers in the background and watches. It is Sarah's home that Annie lives in, so Annie helps out with the daily chores that need to be done in a rural area like this. Daily chores include retrieving eggs from the hen house and hand-washing of clothes. Making butter and bread is all done by hand. (To Annie's disgust, people in the city buy their bread and butter pre-made!) Their life is a simple one, far from the modern contrivances of the day. Annie considers herself a lucky woman for having a home despite being a spinster and having a hump on her back. She was never considered marraige material and has lived with family members from year to year. Sarah took Annie into her home after Annie's sister Maud had passed away and her widow decided to remarry. Now, the threat of moving on is back. It appears that Sarah is being courted by a neighbor, Billy Kerr, who Annie thinks is at least 20 years Sarah's junior. This whole idea has Annie worked up and more flustered than usual. She's appalled that this could be happening, and is worried about what the neighbors would think. On top of all this, Annie has witnessed something strange going on between her neice and nephew, something that could be very inappropriate. The whole incident has Annie worried and troubled. I enjoyed reading Annie Dunne. Although the story itself was somewhat lacking, for I felt there was not enough substance to this book, the book itself was beautifully written. The beauty of this book was Barry's descriptions of the beautiful pastoral world of Annie Dunne and the precise characterizations that made Annie and the other characters come to life. One could almost hear the pristine silence of the green Irish countryside and the laughter of children, and see the humpbacked image of Annie Dunne living in the beauty that is Ireland. I recommend this book for those readers that yearn for books about the Ireland of long ago.