Annie Dunne

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Their presence stirs Annie’s memories and sensibilities, and heightens her awareness of the vulnerability of her age. But while Annie Dunne moved me, and did eventually repay my close attention, there were times when it did seem to be meandering, and Barry's prose, which is usually so transporting, didn't seem as lucid as in other works. The arrival of the children break the two women out of their rut as they find ways to include them in farm life, as well as entertain them.

This compassionate portrait of a distraught woman mourning the years of promise and dreams that were "narrowed by the empty hand of possibility" is a masterful feat of characterization, all the more vivid against the backdrop of rural Ireland in the 1950s, undergoing changes that throw Annie's life into sharper focus. The storyline follows the courtship of Sarah by a local farmer, Billy Kerr, and Annie’s mothering of the two visiting children. I’ve reviewed two of Sebastian Barry’s other books here on PfP over the past couple of years, The Secret Scripture and The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty. This starts off slowly -- which isn't a criticism -- spinning its tale and characterization and themes as a spider spins a graceful web. This passage, written about Annie's brother, Willie, who died in WWI, sums up their dilemma perfectly: "He died in the mud like a beast for us, our Willie, so that everything could continue as before, and despite that he did that, and gave his life, it never did.In Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner is devoted to 'Annie', in jeans and flannel shirts, a Berkeley degree, who believes in magic and the first amendment. Gabe Hudson's first book is an acutely inventive collection of seven short stories and a novella, all of them related to the Persian Gulf war in one way or another, but none bearing any resemblance to what we saw on CNN.

Like that book, it is filled with the most exquisite prose that makes you want to re-read sentences and paragraphs just for the joy of it. But when June is queen, eternally in the grasses, in the wood pigeons, in the dank rooks, in the potato gardens, in the cabbage patches, wild dreams are given birth to with all the mighty energy of the full-blowing year. I read Olive Kitteridge twelve years ago and Annie Dunne is fresh in my mind, so obviously I feel more familiar with Annie. When Charlie and Tinsel are drunkenly making the rounds, they sound like ''a gaggle of maimed waterfowl fleeing the korn wolf. Set in a rural farm in Kelsha, County Wicklow, in 1950s Ireland, it describes one summer when the eponymous Annie Dunne and her cousin Sarah look after her nephew Trevor’s two young children while he and his wife visit London on undescribed business.

The interesting thing is that the childrens’ father is Annie’s nephew, who she helped to raise after his mother (Annie’s sister) had some sort of nervous breakdown when her kids were young.

When Billy comes to the farm, Sarah asks if this is true, and says that she cannot marry anyone who threatens Annie, whom she loves like a sister. Trevor and his wife are moving from Dublin to London; while they are looking for work and for a house, and setting up housekeeping, they cannot have the two children with them.But it's Annie's passionate observations and shifting moods -- rendered in dense prose that's close to poetry -- that fuel this fine novel.

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. When Annie's nephew and his wife are set to go to London to find work, their two small children, a little boy and his older sister, are brought down to spend the summer with their great-aunt. There are a lot of posers out there trying too hard to stand out, attempting to be original both with language and by creating unusual characters.A summer of adventure, pain, delight and ultimately epiphany unfolds for both the children and their elderly caretakers in this poignant and exquisitely told story of innocence, loss and reconciliation.