Annie Dunne – Sebastian Barry

From Amazon
The central character in Sebastian Barry’s novel Annie Dunne is a woman who has been pushed to the margins, a woman whom life has given few chances of happiness and fulfilment. Unmarried, she spends years as housekeeper to her brother-in-law because her sister is too ill to manage. Her sister dies, her brother-in-law remarries and Annie Dunne is homeless. Invited by her cousin Sarah, she moves to a small farm in a remote part of Wicklow. As the novel opens, the two cousins share their lives and the work on the farm. It is the late 1950s and rural Ireland is changing around them. Annie’s nephew heads for London in search of work and leaves his young children with their great-aunt. Content with her life with Sarah, Annie also finds a new capacity for love in her feelings for the two children. Yet even the small pleasures that Annie finds in her life are threatened. An unlikely suitor pays court to Sarah. Her love for the children opens her up to pain almost as much as to happiness. Annie Dunne is a novel in which few external dramas occur–there is an accident with a pony and trap, one of the children goes temporarily missing–but Barry evokes superbly the inner dramas of his characters. In a society where emotions are often severely repressed and expressed only obliquely, small incidents hint at larger feelings and Barry has written a story in which these are subtly and poignantly unfolded

This is the third Sebastian Barry novel I have read. Set in county Wicklow, it is the beautifully written story of Annie Dunne and her cousin Sarah, on Sarah’s 13 acre farm. The story of what happens the summer Annie’s nephews two children come to stay has some surprisingly dark undercurrents. The prose is often hauntigly beautiful, the Irish voices ring out clear and strong, as we become emersed in the fragile world of Annie Dunne. We understand quickly how her life has been, the small incidents and the larger disappointments that have marked the passing years. With the arrival of the children she expierences a variety of new feelings. Her comfortable world is threatened and she must struggle with some difficult ideas, about things she barely understands. Really wonderful writng, and quietly unforgettable.