Join Amazon Prime and get unlimited Free One-Day Delivery. Already a member? Sign in.

 

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
   
More Buying Choices
57 used & new from £0.01
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
At Swim, Two Boys
 
 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book

At Swim, Two Boys (Paperback)

by Jamie O'Neill (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
Price: £6.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £2.00 (22%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

Want guaranteed delivery by Wednesday, July 15? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
25 new from £3.80 32 used from £0.01
Other Editions: RRP: Our Price: Other Offers:
Hardcover (New Ed) 29 used & new from £0.04

Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with The Story of the Night by Colm Toibin

At Swim, Two Boys + The Story of the Night
Price For Both: £12.98

Show availability and shipping details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

The Story of the Night

The Story of the Night

by Colm Toibin
4.6 out of 5 stars (14)  £5.99
Now and Then

Now and Then

by William Corlett
4.8 out of 5 stars (47) 
Brothers. Life, death, truth (Collins Flamingo)

Brothers. Life, death, truth (Collins Flamingo)

by Ted Van Lieshout
4.8 out of 5 stars (13) 
Call Me by Your Name

Call Me by Your Name

by Andre Aciman
4.2 out of 5 stars (12)  £5.99
Now is the Hour

Now is the Hour

by Tom Spanbauer
4.4 out of 5 stars (8)  £5.99
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Paperback: 656 pages
  • Publisher: Scribner; New edition edition (1 Jul 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0743207149
  • ISBN-13: 978-0743207140
  • Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 4.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 85,089 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
You may have read the hype. Irishman Jamie O'Neill was working as a London hospital porter when his 10-year labour of love, the 200,000-word manuscript of At Swim, Two Boys, written on a laptop during quiet patches at work, was suddenly snapped up for a hefty six-figure advance. He had to open his first bank account to cash the cheque, the story goes. For once, the book fully deserves the hype.

In the spring of 1915, Jim Mack and "the Doyler", two Dublin boys, make a pact to swim to an island in Dublin Bay the following Easter. By the time they do, Dublin has been consumed by the Easter Uprising, and the boys' friendship has blossomed into love--a love that will in time be overtaken by tragedy. O'Neill's prose, playing merrily with vocabulary, syntax and idiom, has unsurprisingly drawn comparisons to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, but in his creation of comic characters (such as Jim's pathetic but irrepressible father) and in the sheer scale of his work, Charles Dickens springs to mind first. But Dickens never wrote a love story between young men as achingly beautiful as this.

In the character of Anthony MacMurrough, haunted by voices as he pursues his illegal and dangerous desire for Dublin boys, O'Neill has created a complex and fascinating centre to his novel, rescuing the love story from mawkishness, and allowing a serious meditation on history, politics and desire. For as Ireland seeks its own future free of British government, so Jim, Doyle and MacMurrough look back to Sparta to find a way to live their own future. As Dr Scrotes, one of MacMurrough's voices, commands:

Help these boys build a nation their own. Ransack the histories for clues to their past. Plunder the literature for words they can speak.
In this massive, enthralling and brilliant début, Jamie O'Neill has indeed done just that: provided a nation for what Walt Whitman calls, in O'Neill's epigraph, "the love of comrades". --Alan Stewart --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Peter Ackroyd
'The music of Jamie O'Neill's prose creates a new Irish symphony' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Product Description
Inside This Book (Learn More)
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
Check the boxes next to the tags you consider relevant or enter your own tags in the field below
(1)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

At Swim, Two Boys
61% buy the item featured on this page:
At Swim, Two Boys 4.6 out of 5 stars (28)
£6.99
The Story of the Night
17% buy
The Story of the Night 4.6 out of 5 stars (14)
£5.99
Call Me by Your Name
8% buy
Call Me by Your Name 4.2 out of 5 stars (12)
£5.99
Brothers. Life, death, truth (Collins Flamingo)
8% buy
Brothers. Life, death, truth (Collins Flamingo) 4.8 out of 5 stars (13)
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

28 Reviews
5 star:
 (22)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.6 out of 5 stars (28 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Poignant love story of youth & history & politics., 3 Sep 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: At Swim, Two Boys (Hardcover)
As if I have just woken from a dream: a novel read over the weekend. Against an utterley convincing historical backdrop, O'Neill has portrayed the love, true love, of two boys for each other. An emotional & sexual understanding grows at the same time as a politically conscious one. Personal loyalties are bound in with the whirlwind of change that saw Ireland of the 1910's move from King & Empire against the Kaiser to various shades of green. There have been comparisons to Joyce, indeed much is Joycean as we know it. The erudition, the word play and a familiar rhythmic Irish re-arrangement of the language. But in the end novels must stand their own stand. This one is full of joy & sadness, full of revelation & change for all the main protagonists but most of all for young Jim & Doyler.

Those are my thoughts. But how do I say in a few words what it made me feel? How it made me cry and laugh and yes, see! What images played in my mind as I tried to close the cover but couldn't lift my eyes from the final words? I can't. Only Jamie O'Neill's can do that. Read them. Give up your weekend.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Irish Love, 12 Jan 2003
By M. E. Harvey "bubu_60" (Lancs UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: At Swim, Two Boys (Hardcover)
This is a a beautiful book telling the love story of two Dublin boys in the period up to and including the Easter Rising. I have never read a so-called "gay" novel before which so marvellously sets its chief characters against the background of anguished political events leading inevitably to a tragic end. Readers, particularly gay readers, will fall in love with Jim and Doyler. But besides these two there is a host of fascinating other characters who leap of tbe page. Jamie O'Neill is a superb, funny,original and innovative writer who has you turning page after page wondering what will happen next and leaving you in tears at the end. Highly recommended.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Simply Magnificent, 13 May 2003
By Terribleman "(Frank)" (London, England) - See all my reviews
The only awkward thing about Jamie O'Neill's novel is its (admittedly apposite) title which quotes from Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds.

The novel is a magical evocation of Irish social history interwoven with the secret lives and loves of all of its characters - not simply the two boys of the title. O'Neill's ear for dialogue; the sureness of his prose and the eloquence (but never prudishness) with with he deals with love and sexuality are truly awe-inspiring.

While it is deserved and uplifting that At Swim, Two Boys has not been relagated as a 'gay novel', this is not - for all that has been said - a history of the Easter 1916 which provides a part of the backdrop, nor does it reimagine Irish history - but that I trust was never its intent, nor does it diminish this wonderful novel one whit.

Equally, facile comparisons to Joyce and Flann O'Brien, however flattering are hardly appropriate. O'neill's language moves from the lapidary to the sublime, his coinage is sometimes fabulous, always arresting, but his work in not obsessed with language but with characters, and his language reflects their dreams, their aspirations, their follies and their insecurities. This is not a modernist novel in the Joycean sense, densely allusive, abstruse and all encompassing, but a more traditional novel shot through with briliiance, empathy, honesty and courage which - if it does not redefine Irish history, changes the face of Irish literature.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A gripping historical gay romance
What immediately struck me in this novel is that it manages to be a novel about gays without being a gay novel, with all the dubious implications that term has. Read more
Published 2 months ago by M. A. Krul

4.0 out of 5 stars Like a readable James Joyce...
This is a must read for all those who, like me, have repeatedly tried to finish Ulysses and failed. Although it is not so challenging to the literary conventions of its time it is... Read more
Published 23 months ago by L. Scholey

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply beautiful
A bit difficult language, but a beautiful story.

You simply fall in love with Doyler, Jim, Mr. Mack, aunt Sawney, Nancy, aunt Eva.... even Mr. Read more
Published on 2 Jul 2007 by Daniel Sundkvist

3.0 out of 5 stars Loving description of a friendship, but a bit long-winded
In this book the author describes the budding (sexual) relationship between two 16-year old boys in Dublin at the beginning of the 20th century. Read more
Published on 23 May 2007 by Linda Oskam

5.0 out of 5 stars A modern classic
I really dont understand how anyone can give this book 1 star. I admit it took me a while to get into the prose, but once you do the effort it takes is well worth it. Read more
Published on 16 Dec 2006 by K. D. Sharkey

2.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful failure
Aspects of this novel are quite beautiful - the clarity of descriptions and characterisation is outstanding, and I applaud the author for the meticlous nature of these. Read more
Published on 30 Oct 2006 by Daniel Park

5.0 out of 5 stars The most sublime book ever
I was eleven the first time I read a truly sublime book: the kind that tells a truth so compelling that it blinds you to the parallel knowledge that it is something special and,... Read more
Published on 28 Aug 2006 by S. Caughie

1.0 out of 5 stars FEJ
I disaggree with all previous reviews over this book, I found it very hard going and unless you are Irish or you know the dialects it makes very little sense, and in my mind it`s... Read more
Published on 29 Jul 2006 by fej

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding!!
This book is outstandingly excellent. The love story between the two boys is so tender and beautifully told. Read more
Published on 23 April 2006 by kehs

5.0 out of 5 stars Love for country and love for boy
At Swim Two Boys is worth every single one of the years it took to write.
The language Jamie O'Neill handles is deft and skilful and unusual. Read more
Published on 26 Feb 2006 by Tom

Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

 Beta (What's this?)
This product's forum (0 discussions)
  Discussion Replies Latest Post
  No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
  [Cancel]


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Feedback

Health & Beauty at Amazon.co.uk

Elemis Resurface and Renew Skin Care Gift Set of 4 Products
From soap to shavers, massagers to mascara, stock up on your daily essentials or truly pamper yourself.

›Discover Health & Beauty

  

More From Jamie O'Neill

Disturbance

Disturbance by Jamie O'Neill

The first novel from the bestselling author of At Swim, Two Boys, now... Read more
£6.99 £5.49

 

Up to 50% off Dental Care

Braun Oral-B Professional Care 6000 Rechargeable Toothbrush - Pack of 2
Put a sparkle in your smile with up to 50% off selected Oral-B and Philips rechargeable toothbrushes.

›Up to 50% off power toothbrushes

  

Treat Someone

Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificates--available in any amount from £5 to £500 With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is).

›Learn more about Gift Certificates

  
Ad

Where's My Stuff?

Delivery and Returns

Need Help?

Your Recent History

  (What's this?)
You have no recently viewed items or searches.

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.

Look to the right column to find helpful suggestions for your shopping session.
Continue Shopping: Top Sellers

amazon.co.uk Amazon Home
International Sites:  United States  |  Germany  |  France  |  Japan  |  Canada  |  China
Business Programs: Sell on Amazon  |  Fulfilment by Amazon  |  Join Associates  |  Join Advantage
Customer Service  |  Help  |  View Basket  |  Your Account
About Amazon.co.uk  |  Careers at Amazon
Conditions of Use & Sale |  Privacy Notice  © 1996-2009, Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates