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Sebastian Barry

On Canaan's Side Hardcover – 4 Aug. 2011

by Sebastian Barry (Author)

4.3 871 ratings

Book 3 of 3: Dunne Family

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'As they used to say in Ireland, the devil only comes into good things.'

Narrated by Lilly Bere, On Canaan's Side opens as she mourns the loss of her grandson, Bill. The story then goes back to the moment she was forced to flee Dublin, at the end of the First World War, and follows her life through into the new world of America, a world filled with both hope and danger.

At once epic and intimate, Lilly's narrative unfurls as she tries to make sense of the sorrows and troubles of her life and of the people whose lives she has touched. Spanning nearly seven decades, it is a novel of memory, war, family-ties and love, which once again displays Sebastian Barry's exquisite prose and gift for storytelling.

Book 3 of 3

Dunne Family
Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Faber & Faber
Publication date

4 Aug. 2011
Reading age

18 years and up
Dimensions

16.1 x 2.5 x 24 cm
ISBN-10

0571226531
ISBN-13

978-0571226535
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Sebastian Barry
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Sebastian Barry
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Sebastian Barry
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Sebastian Barry
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Product description

Review

'A work of great lyrical beauty, a big-hearted story of a woman at the end of her long and difficult life.' --Amy Raphael, The Times

'Imbued with sorrow, joy, tenderness and also moments of great humour ... a luminously beautiful story that well deserves its place on the Booker longlist, and beyond.' --Leyla Sanai, Independent on Sunday

'It's a story that will deepen your understanding of yourself and others. The quietening, closing chapters are amongst the most moving and beautiful you will read this year - or any other.' --Niall MacMonagle, Irish Times

'A lyrical evocation of trauma and exile, bearing a seemingly endless series of potent images.' --Alex Clark, Guardian

'Stunningly poetic ... On Canaan's Side can be celebrated for the beauty, wisdom and pleasure it provides.'
--Adam O'Riordan, Sunday Telegraph

Book Description

From the bestselling Costa Prize-winning author of The Secret Scripture another heartbreaking novel spanning a lifetime.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Faber & Faber; Main edition (4 Aug. 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0571226531
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0571226535
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.1 x 2.5 x 24 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 742,252 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 14,426 in Women's Biographies
- 16,360 in Romance Sagas
- 49,634 in Historical Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews:
4.3 871 ratings

About the authors

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Sebastian Barry
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Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. Laureate for Irish Fiction 2018-2021, his novels have twice won the Costa Book of the Year award, the Independent Booksellers Award and the Walter Scott Prize. He had two consecutive novels shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, A Long Long Way (2005) and the top ten bestseller The Secret Scripture (2008), and has also won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and others. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. He lives in County Wicklow.
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Sebastian Barry
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4.3 out of 5

871 global ratings

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R. Chipperfield

A Poem, actually.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 February 2013

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Saying that 'On Canaan's Side' isn't Barry's best still means that it's almost superb. Who can he be compared to? But the piling up of sorrows and miseries is hard to take, and towards the end I felt that the exposure of Mr Nolan's life and his death were more than enough grief in one story. So many people in the book were tidied up by death. The last jigsaw piece was Mr Nolan being clicked into place. Then Lilly had no more loved ones to lose, so the story ends - she decides to end it.

Barry is so compassionate, so humane, and so profoundly understanding of our heartaches and joys, our patience and our rage, that this sort of book is really a vehicle for his words. I imagine him getting up in the morning with his head so boiling with words and emotions that before he's even had coffee he cries 'I must write!' and hits the computer. Or pad of paper. And then, so slowly, crafts his wonderful prose.

As a novel, On Canaan's Side is unsatisfying. Lilly had happy times, but there's too much attention paid to her sorrows, and her periods of recovery from her bereavements aren't developed. Looking at 'On Canaan's Side' as a symphony, the 'bridge passages' are too brief, and the themes are too heavy and too crammed with development. One waits in some fear for the next disaster. Also, her ageing isn't a factor in the tale, until suddenly she's 'an old crone'!

The book is a poem. Plot doesn't matter very much, it's only a scaffold to support the language, which is exquisite. As in a good poem, Barry's words say what the reader longs to say, they illuminate and express thoughts he doesn't know he has.

Alternatively, it should have been a play.

5 people found this helpful

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paul callick

Beautiful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 April 2023

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Ranging over most of the 20th century, it's an amazingly short novel really. But I read it slowly; each page, each sentence is so marvellously written. The characters are full of little surprises, all with the ring of truth; I reckon it helps to know something about Irish history.

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Exiled in the Promised Land

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 July 2012

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Written in the first person, On Canaan's Side tells the story of Lilly Bere, the 89 year old narrator and protagonist who has had to live her life in exile and under the radar in the US.

Lilly's story brings to life one of the most turbulent times in Irish history, when political divisions meant that many caught up in the conflict after the first world war, were either forced into exile or killed. Lilly's story has some parallels with that of my own Irish grandmother's, who, luckily for her, left Ireland not long after the end of the first war, and before the bloodshed and deep political divisions, prior to the creation of the Irish Free State, forced some, like Lilly, to flee in fear of their lives.
Lilly's crime was to fall in love with Tadg Bere, who on returning from the First World War, chose to work as an auxiliary police officer for the oppressors, the hated Black and Tans. When Tadg's name appears on a hit-list he and Lily run from Dublin to America and head for Chicago. Perhaps, with hindsight they should have chosen to go west, rather than east, and certainly not to a city already full of immigrants from Ireland and supporters for the other side of the political divide.

Rather than add in some plot spoilers at this juncture, suffice to say that Lilly is a survivor and despite the seemingly endless dreadful blows that life deals her, she not only endures but, even manages to enjoy her life with quiet stoicism. Lilly takes pride in her work as a cook and is admired and appreciated by her employer.

Sebastian Barry writes haunting, poetic and achingly beautiful prose. His characterisation of an elderly Irish woman is utterly convincing. When I finished the book I felt bereft. As I have come late to Barry's work and now know that these characters appear in not just an earlier novel but in his earlier plays, I can't wait to reconnect with them.

3 people found this helpful

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R. A. Davison

Slightly depressing reflection on a woman's life

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 February 2012

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On Canaan's Side, which was longlisted but not shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, tells the story of Lily Bere, an elderly Irish American and her "First Day Without Bill" through to her "Seventeenth Day Without Bill". Bill, her grandson, has before the beginning of this novel committed suicide after returning home from the original Gulf War.

On Canaan's Side acts as a memoir for Lily, as she flits between the visits of her friends in her hour of need, and her history beginning with her childhood in Dublin. Though it takes a death as its main plot focus around which the story unfolds it is very much your average "old lady looks back upon her life" novel. It is nicely written and involving and includes much of the history that Lily would have lived through, the Civil Rights movement, political assassinations and Vietnam, right back to the First World War and the changing times of Ireland in the 1920's and how world events can directly impact individual lives.

It was a nice book, and I enjoyed reading it, but, it won't be one which will linger in my mind for a long while to come, or perhaps one which I will particularly remember reading without the aid of my blog. It's also slightly depressing as Lily lives a long, tragedy filled life, were she is often ill used and alone. Apparently Lily's family, the Dunnes are also characters in two other Sebastian Barry novels Annie Dunne and A Long, Long, Way and one day I may read some of those to complete the picture, but, so many books.......so little time..........

6/10

One person found this helpful

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