[.ca] Star of the Sea (ISBN 0151009082)

From Amazon.com:
Joseph O'Connor's impressive historical novel, Star of the Sea, examines the unsettled personal tragedies among a group of interrelated characters and their difficulties in disregarding the past. Lord Merridith and his family board the titular ship in 1847, bound for New York, leaving behind an Ireland devastated by famine and strife. The family's beautiful nanny, Mary Duane, is with them, having fled a life of poverty, prostitution, and extreme tragedy. Another passenger, American journalist Grantley Dixon, is lured to America by business and his thinly veiled affair with Lady Merridith. Mary Duane discovers that Pius Mulvey, her former fiancé and the brother of her deceased husband, is among the overcrowded group of disease-ridden steerage passengers. A renowned thief and murderer, Mulvey abandoned Duane, only to return and sabotage her life in Ireland. Despised by his countrymen, Mulvey has been ordered by a group of steerage thugs to assassinate the demonized Merridith or face his own death. Conflict is inevitable, but O'Connor is more interested in the complexity of history and relationships and how each makes reinvention and resolution impossible. O'Connor presents the story as a work of journalism written by Dixon, composed in the era's tabloid style, even including passages from the captain's register and crew interviews. These devices lend the work a sense of authenticity, reinforced by the author's intimate knowledge of the period and his evocative, realistic prose: "At night one sensed the ship as absurdly out of its element, a creaking, leaking, incompetent concoction of oak and pitch and nails and faith, bobbing on a wilderness of viciously black water which could explode at the slightest provocation." O'Connor conveys a sense of immediacy and dimension in his ambitious story, providing this uncertain voyage with an ultimate sense of direction. --Ross Doll

Haunting Irish Historial Fiction:
Star of the Sea is one of the most elegant, engaging and enchanting fictional accounts of historical fiction I've read. We've all met the Pius Mulveys, Captains, Marys and Grantleys of the world, though too many Mulveys and too few Captains, Marys and Grantleys. O'Connor brings them, together with the ship, seas and port, to life in this novel. Perfect for reading in the summer twilight hours when the fireflies glimmer or cozied up near the fire on a late winter night. Either way, wherever and whenever you read it, you will be transported to the deck of the Star of the Sea moments after you begin to read...

Too clever by half:
O'Connor's novel is extremely well researched and will be informative for those who do not know that the famine in Ireland was a very bad thing. The novel is set on board a ship sailing to the New World at this shameful time in history. Using flashbacks and excerpts from "recovered documents", the lives of the passengers are woven together in a "penny dreadful" murder mystery. After an atmospheric and gripping opening, O'Connor lets the novel drift. Characters are thinly drawn and behave inconsistently. The clever resourceful villain behaves like a whimpering fool to facilitate the surprise ending. The sprinklings of Latin (most of us have forgotten what we learned) and the silliness of having one of his characters sketch the plot of Oliver Twist for Dickens were irritating. It felt as if Mr O'Connor had a screenplay with blockbuster appeal in mind. It could have been a great novel. Perhaps the film will be better.

Star of the Sea - Joseph O'Connor:
The strength and the force in O'Connor's style sweep the reader along in a riveting tale of a tragic era. Refreshing and exciting, this book deserves all the accolades it can get!

It's all been done before:
I'm not having much luck with historical fiction of late. And I had problems with this story. There is no doubt that Joseph O'Connor is a fabulous writer, and his recreation of the 1840's is astounding. His style lends the work a sense of authenticity, reinforced by the author's intimate knowledge of the period and also his evocative, realistic prose. There was, however, wasn't much to keep me interested in this book, at least to read it until the end. The novel starts off brilliantly with a wonderful depiction of the first night on the ship. O'Connor's vivid descriptions and use of metaphor are astounding, but the rest of the book just doesn't live up to the wonderful atmosphere that he created in his first chapter. I found the characters to be typical historical stock stereotypes with a kind of one dimensionality that I found frustrating - The upper class blustery Lord Merridith, the beautiful, whimsical Mary Duane, and the angst ridden Pius Mulvey. I can appreciate the way O'Connor weaves the back stories of these characters into the narrative, but to me the story kept deviating from life on the ship; and I wanted to get back to what was happening on the voyage. The descriptions of the peasants in steerage were suitably horrific and O'Connor really presented a realistic account of what it would have been like to travel to the New World in such conditions. He also presents a vivid account of the poverty and starvation that existed in Ireland at the time. But this has been covered so much in other fiction and also in popular movies such as Gangs of New York. Perhaps I need to give this book another try at a later date or maybe just give up reading historical fiction all together.

Extraordinary!:
A stunning work of art. The author uses the intertwined lives of several characters to convey the tragedy of the Irish famine and the human cost of migration, and does so in glorious prose. I've never read a more moving evocation of the Irish famine, which is the book's central focus. But this is also a tale about the Irish diaspora. O'Connor strips that event of romance of hindsight and conveys the pain and suffering that accompanied the emigrants on their journey. As a writer, I'm impressed by the book's complex structure; it's not easy to pull off these shifting points-of-view, but O'Connor does so with ease and grace. This is a beautifully written novel and a marvelous accomplishment.