A Long, Long Way by Sebastian Barry

Second reading; first read about 2007



This is a book that will keep you awake at night. This is a book that will haunt you long after you have finished it. This is a book that will break your heart.

Willie Dun is a 17-year-old Irishman from Dublin, who volunteers to fight in World War I, mainly because he is too short to be a policeman, as his father has long wanted him to be. He survives two years of the almost unimaginable horrors of trench warfare and gas attacks, only to find himself, on his first furlough home, derided by some for fighting for the English and asked to fire on fellow Irishmen in the streets of Dublin in the Easter Uprising of 1916, when Irish nationalist defied England to demand Home Rule. Torn in two by the situation, Willie returns to the front to fight, even though he no longer understands exactly why he is fighting or what he is fighting for. During a blessed lull in the fighting, as Willie sings "Ave Maria" for his fellow Irish soldiers, he grieves for their predicament: "...he sang for these ruined men, these doomed listeners, these wretched fools of men come out to fight a war without a country to their name, the slaves of England and the kings of nothing...."

The terror and the maiming and the slaughter of the soldiers is pictured in excruciating detail, in language that flows like a very torrent of grief. Barry also gives us the mechanisms that such fighters must use to keep from going mad--their humor, their grumbling, their constant cursing. And also their moments of heroism and self sacrifice brought about by friendship and a sense of honor.

Only the very best of writers could take a plot like this and tell it in language so lyric and beautiful, and not have the result be incongruous. Barry is one of the very best of writers, in my opinion the best writing today. The rhythm and perfection of image in his writing reminds me of his countryman, the poet William Butler Yeats. In fact, Yeats's poem "The Second Coming" contains lines which perfectly reflect the message of this novel:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

Everyone should read this novel of World War I, because its message is one that stands for all time. I know the young men who fought in the jungles and swamps of Viet Nam and came home to a country divided, where war protesters were being shot, will understand it. I believe the young men and women who fought and who continue to serve in Irag and Afghanastan, where the friends and the enemies wear the same face, will understand it. War is indeed hell. Sometimes, perhaps, it cannot be avoided, but it should not be entered into without a careful consideration of the terrible consequences upon those who fight.