The book speaks eloquently on the ramifications of the politics of unrest on individual lives. Was this a case of the writer’s environment simply manifesting itself in his work, or was it an end you hoped to achieve when you began writing the story of Eneas McNulty? Besides the hero's name, there exist parallels between Eneas McNulty and Virgil's wanderer, Aeneas. Mindful of Joyce's use of Homeric myth, did you approach this technique with trepidation, or did it seem naturally appropriate for the telling of Eneas's story? When I was looking for a name that I could use in my book, I was having difficulty finding something. One night I was watching television and on the news was an account of a car accident in the midlands. One of the witnesses was a local man and his name appeared briefly on the screen. . . Eneas McNulty. It surprised me that the name Aeneas had survived in Ireland, but when you consider the old hedge schools, whose penniless masters spoke more Latin and Irish than English, perhaps it’s not so surprising. It seemed the right name for an Irish wanderer. But as you can see, these informal parallels are a world away from Joyce, who modelled his book so intently and masterfully and artfully on the Greek structure. the Irish, so you might get a touch of Carolan, Strauss and New Orleans' finest in the one night in the lobby say of the Grand at Bundoran. He goes off winter evenings with his piccolo, his violin, his wooden flutes and oftentimes

The book speaks eloquently on the ramifications of the politics of unrest on individual lives. Was this a case of the writer's environment simply manifesting itself in his work, or was it an end you hoped to achieve when you began writing the story of Eneas McNulty? Sebastian Barry: Hello, Sharon, nice to talk to you. I have been reading Frank McCourt's book for the last weeks, it is by my bed. You can only take a book slow if you have three young kids, and his book makes a tremendous slow read. I haven't yet seen Malachi McCourt's book because it won't get here for another while, but I've seen a documentary about the the brothers and their family. Frank McCourt has sold over four million copies in the States, as you know, and that's some fascination. The fact is, it 's a very special book and extremely well written. I have a feeling that if he had happened to be Chinese and was decribing a Chinese childhood, it would be just as devoured by readers. But of course, Irish America, let's take a risk and say the soul of Irish America is a hardy soul, but a wounded one. Most of Irish America fled from hunger, poverty, indifference, oppression of one kind or another. That soul needs to hear certain old musics, certain old tunes, not sentimental as such, but elemental, with all the strange importance of unimportance. Frank McCourt is in the possession of such songs. Like Sebastian Barry’s other book that I read, “Days Without End,” I had trouble comprehending the dense prose, including the Irish slang, strange idioms, arcane vocabulary, and cryptic expressions. My reading progress was glacially slow until I realized I was reading epic poetry parading as prose.

It is in these ruins, he explains, that he found Roseanne, who is based somewhat tangentially on one of his great aunts, who similarly disappeared into an institution, having somehow transgressed the rigid codes of Catholic Ireland. In one way, The Secret Scripture is a final breaking of the long familial silence that enshrouded her. 'I once heard my grandfather say that she was no good,' says Barry. 'That's what survives and the rumours of her beauty. She was nameless, fateless, unknown. I felt I was almost duty-bound as a novelist to reclaim her and, indeed, remake her.' [email protected] from xx: Did you come across any cases similar to Eneas' situation prior to writing or while writing this novel? last, and enjoying the spot of supper in the lamplit parlour at first, and then away up to bed like a ghost, his mother after scrubbing at his nails fiercely, as tired and contented as humankind may be.

Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “the finest book to come out of Europe this year,” The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is acclaimed Irish playwright Sebastian Barry’s lyrical tale of a fugitive everyman.

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Max from St.Louis, MO: Who are some contemporary playwrights or authors that are big in Ireland that you can recommend that don't quite have the name recognition here in the United States...any you can recommend? The timeline stutters through events in Eneas’ life, taking a long time over small passages of time but flashing through momentous landmarks. Wars start and end. Decades pass with barely a mention. But the language is a delight. As the reader follows the hapless Eneas, there are glimmers of hope but also a terrible feeling of inevitability about the ending. You live this exile’s life with him and feel his quiet anguish. And what more could a reader want from an author than be allowed to immerse themselves in a character? Barry is undoubtedly an astute chronicler of the human condition.

This, by now, is familiar territory for Irish writers, both of fiction and memoir, but Barry illuminates it anew by interrogating, through these two intertwining, and often contradictory, narratives, the nature of memory - and of writing itself. 'The true unreliability of everything written down utterly fascinates me,' he says when I meet him in the lounge of the Merrion Hotel in Dublin, where we sit among whispering politicians from the nearby Dáil building. 'Even the person who has set down the so-called facts the most dispassionately, the most accurately, the most believably, will still get it essentially wrong.' The writing is more direct, with fewer lyrical flourishes than the first novel, but carries its own ingenuity. The dual narrative, with chapters split between the almost hundred-year-old Rosanne and her psychiatrist Dr Grene, is very effective at keeping the reader enthralled. The same themes are present, with a renewed sense of hostility directed towards the Catholic church. Roseanne’s treatment, as a vulnerable young woman, at the hands of (mostly) men who use patriarchy and religion to control women and boost their standing in society, is as horrendous to read as it is compelling. much asking a fella comes up from the lake with big flat stones worn by the lapping of waves and there are five steps down from the pears in the passing of an afternoon. That is a great day for the garden. There are similarities between the whereabouts of Eneas McNulty and The Secret Scripture. The Character of Roseanne comes into play in both novels which I really found intriguing.Sebastian Barry: Less so than I thought there would be, and maybe I was most happy about that. It is difficult to extricate a novel from the life of the writer, but unless the jury of the Gods say otherwise, I think I managed with this. Sebastian Barry is a conjurer, and he conjures up Ireland, the chaos of the Irish question and the impossibility of living an unpolitical life while suspended between the English and the IRA. Into this maelstrom he tosses Eneas McNulty, a quiet man who would like to live a simple life in Sligo, but who finds himself under the sentence of death by the rebel faction. Eneas lives his life in the shadow of this sentence, haunted by his memories and by nostalgic ties to a place he is barred from forever. Sebastian Barry is a playwright, novelist, and poet whose best-known play, The Steward of Christendom, has won numerous awards. He lives in Dublin, Ireland. Never forget the people that went in and out of that place in their time,' says Tom his father, `because, Eneas, they were your own people, and wore the better clothes and were respected. They had plentiful carriages and were respected. People with your own face' -- and his father's neat fingertips touch the top of his head -- `that sent butter down the fiver and out into the wide ocean to Spain and Portugal where cows are scarce.'

Sebastian Barry uses the language with great imagination but never overwrites. This book is a wonderful gift, in every sense.” —The Washington Post Welcome to the barnesandnoble.com author auditorium. We are extremely excited to welcome author Sebastian Barry, who will be joining us live from Ireland to discuss his new book THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS MCNULTY. Barry's sweet, lyrical pitch never falters; the novel has a bold measure of old-fashioned blessedness. . . .Barry vividly creates Eneas' warm humanity. . . .[his] happy childhood provides a momentary glimpse at the stark, troubling contours of Ireland's somber history. -- The New York Times Book Review Aoibheann Sweeney Eneas and his friend Harcourt are described as “ scraps of people both, blown off the road of life by history’s hungry breezes.” Consider their relationship—what they have in common and how they differ. In what ways do Sligo and Lagos share for them a similar appeal, as well as similarly insurmountable obstacles?together out of oddments, lanky, only later to find good muscles pile on his bones, but weak at five. Eneas is in many ways the duffer of the family. He has no marketable, skills or talents, only a most tender heart. He is someone who from the off is not quite going to make a successful way in the world. Loyal, a bit of a dreamer, he would probably have led a quiet, peaceful, homely life in another time and place. Married,probably worked with his hands, skilfully, married a local girl, been a devoted husband, father, grandfather, and died as peacefully as he lived. John from [email protected]: How do you think the writing process varies from writing a novel compared to writing a play? Which do you prefer? The eponymous hero of this novel is an Irish odd man out. Born into pinched, eccentric circumstances in Sligo, at the turn of the century, Eneas innocently enlists in the Royal Irish Constabulary during the Troubles and becomes a marked man for life. Pursued by his best friend turned I.R.A. enforcer, he finds nomadic work as a herring fisherman in Scotland, a volunteer soldier at the retreat through Dunkirk, a canal digger in postcolonial Nigeria, and, finally, as the proprietor of a doss-house for homeless men on the Isle of Dogs. Although Eneas will leave no trace on the record of the century, he grown into an unforgettable Everyman, thanks to Barry's fine bardic voice, which is tinctured with humor and compassion. The New Yorker