I’ve been fascinated with the First World War for a long time, probably working backward from post-war literature to find out more about this event that tore the very core of Western man’s belief in humanity and God. So when NPR’s “You Must Read This” segment featured R.L. Stine raving about “A Long Long Way,” I added it to my list.
What an incredible book. The protagonist, Willie Dunne, is an Irish kid who gets sucked into the mess that is World War I in 1914. Irish nationalism falls into the mix, making for a conflicted experience that has eerie overtones of the American experience in Vietnam (in particular, an incident where Irish nationalist kids spit on Willie for wearing a uniform when he’s back in Dublin on leave).
It’s tough to describe how disturbing this novel is as it records civilization being blown to smithereens in the trenches of Belgium. Sebastian Barry’s writing is spare, his similes startling. Witness this scene toward the end of the novel, when Willie once again is up to his knees in mud, gore and violence:
“Two days they suffered there, with water up to their knees, and not a bite came up behind them, not a scanty suggestion of fresh water, nothing. And always the ruckus of the shells, the machine-guns, the evil stenches. Even in the walls of the trenches hung the sad bones and fleshy remnants of other souls, as if some crazy farmer had sown them there, expecting in the spring a harvest of of babies.”
Indeed, you must read this …