The days were quiet. They’re still here. I never thought they’d last. Through them, ran the sense—like an underground river… That there would come a time when these days would be looked back on as happiness: all that life could give of contentment and peace…
It still feels like we just live here, day to day. But isn’t that the beauty of it?… You know the rain comes down, the sun shines, grass grows. Children grow old, and die. That’s the holy all of it. We all know it full well, but can’t even whisper it…
So, you’re happy lad, is that what you are saying? We have our health. Peaceful life. Work that suits us. What more can you ask for?
“It’s life in the dynamics, it’s the Fortissimo as well as the Pianissimo. And that’s what life is, it’s the loud and the soft and you can’t really appreciate the beauty without the difficulty, the grandeur without the adversity.”
— Trevis (Michigan, 5400 km from Dingle and now calls it home)
“The Dingle Peninsula; a rural area in County Kerry, situated on the edge of the harsh Atlantic Ocean, with a strong Irish language culture. An island within an island. Despite this, the town boasts a foreign population of nearly 30% – the locals refer to these individuals as ‘blow-ins’. What brought these people here? And what caused them to stay? With a wide variety of characters, we gain insight into the unique magic of the area and what it means to live there. We witness the highs and the lows of integrating with a rural Irish community, and ask the question of what it takes to truly be considered a ‘local’.—IcyPeaks Media
Benjamin Markovits, in his lukewarm NY Times Book Review titled Life Descends Into Chaos in This Year’s Booker Prize Winner, states “the ’emergency’ is never explained…the political crisis here is a kind of blank; it has no history…we never learn what they’re arguing about, apart from the rule of law…The other big decision is stylistic. There are sections and chapters in the novel but no paragraphs. Dialogue is not punctuated with quotation marks, and is often interrupted by descriptions and sudden dives into interiority. All of which means that following a conversation takes some detective work…”
Markovits is right, all true. But set it all aside. Easily, this was the best book I’ve read in 2023, and one that will stick for some time. I’ve shared a two excerpts from the book below:
Tell me, he says, do you believe in reality? Dad, what is that supposed to mean? We belong to a tradition but tradition is nothing more than what everyone can agree on – the scientists, the teachers, the institutions, if you change ownership of the institutions then you can change ownership of the facts, you can alter the structure of belief, what is agreed upon, that is what they are doing… (they are) trying to change what you and I call reality, they want to muddy it like water, if you say one thing is another thing and you say it enough times, then it must be so, and if you keep saying it over and over people accept it as true – this is an old idea, of course, it really is nothing new, but you’re watching it happen in your own time and not in a book… Sooner or later, of course, reality reveals itself, he says, you can borrow for a time against reality but reality is always waiting, patiently, silently, to exact a price and level the scales——
For how many days the shelling and gunfire has continued, the fighting stopped for the night but her body does not believe the silence, a sensory prickling in her nerves, the banging deep in her skull. She turns to Molly inhaling from her hair the fading scent of jasmine, sensing the mind at peace beneath the sleeping breath, to reach in with her hand and pull the terror out by the root, to caress the mind back to its old shape. Something has winged from the dark of her mind and she holds very still, then turns from Molly, gets up and goes into the kitchen. The sky in astronomical twilight, watching the trees rooted in the earth, thinking, there will be goodness again, there will be high and happy voices, the sound of feet seeking for slippers and the clicking of bicycle wheels through the porch.
If you liked “Bruge” and “Calvary“, you will love this. If you are a fan of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, watch this. Set on a remote island off the west coast of Ireland, with spectacular cinematography. (Thank you Susan)
