Customer Reviews
No country for young men - By: hw, 07 Sep 2008 
When Willie Dunne & his mates marched down to Dublin docks in early 1915, crowds cheered & girls waved. Some men, like Willie, had signed up to defend Catholic Belgium; many hoped that their service would be rewarded with Home Rule; others simply did it to support their wives & children.
Within two years, the cheering would stop & soldiers on leave would be spat at in those same Dublin streets. These "Irish Tommys" had become everyone's enemy: bombarded by German shells, despised as traitors by Ireland & regarded as untrustworthy by the British, whose uniform they wore. The Easter Rising had changed everything.
"A Long Long Way" is a powerful novel about life in the trenches, strongly reminiscent of Robert Graves' eye witness account in "Goodbye to All That". But it's more than that. In his earlier work, Annie Dunne, Sebastian Barry gave a voice to a generation of voiceless Irish women. Here, in the story of Annie's brother Willie, he speaks for a generation of young Irish men who died in Flanders mud only to be airbrushed out of history for the best part of a century.
This book exposes yet another unhealed wound in the shameful & complex histories of Britain & Ireland. The history books are starting to be written, but perhaps the emotional impact can only be conveyed in the pages of a novel.
Allow time to read this novel & more time to think about it.
One dimensional, utterly romanticised characters - By: Flibertigibbit, 27 Jun 2008 
It should be more widely known that between 250,000 & 300,000 Irishmen fought with the British army in WWI alone & at least a further 100,000 in WWII. What with our dubiously "glorious" nationalist tradition in Ireland, we do not like to admit the extent of alllegiance that there was to the crown & that when it mattered, there was no question but that we would fight on the side of civilisation & of Britain. Today, our Irish veterans are ignored by their Government & it is sad to say, countrymen. In 2005 the remaining living Irish D-Day veterans turned up at the Garden of Remembrance for the 60th anniversary commemoration. Apparently, not one representative of the Irish Government was there. What a shameful episode. All the surviving British, Irish & commonwealth soldiers of D-Day are heroes plain & simple & this does not brook any argument or dispute whatsoever. If in doubt, watch Saving Private Ryan.
I am surprised that this book made it to the Booker short list in 2005. I can only say that it must be because of the originality of its subject matter i.e. a fictitious account of the Irish experience in Flanders' trenches during the Great War. It is a story not so far told, as far as I am aware.
The hero of the book, Willie Dunne, is the son of a "castle Catholic" very reminiscent of the main character in Barry's wonderful play The Steward of Christendom. At five foot six Dunne, is way too short of the regulation height of six feet to join the Dublin metropolitan police force like his father (a giant of six feet six as it happens). So, Willie goes to fight for the British army with an Irish regiment in Flanders. There he meets a motley bunch of lads from the different counties of Ireland, many from the Leinster counties of Meath, Wicklow, Kildare & Wexford. On a leave of absence back in Dublin, he stumbles in to the midst of the 1916 rising in Dublin City Centre - which is a particularly well written portion of the novel. It is now that Willie Dunne begins to think about who & what he is fighting for & begins to have divided loyalties. For his father however, things were always clear cut - he is loyal to King George & the Empire. As a depiction of the horrors of war & World War I in particular, the novel is exemplary. The most vivid & terrifying scenes are of German mustard gas attacks & these are brilliantly written, as are the instances of the blood imagery. Overalll however, this novel loses too many marks for me because the characters are very cardboard cut out & one dimensional. Willie, the hero is not only ridiculously pure as the driven snow, but one of the most naïve & just plain stupid characters I have read in fiction. Nearly alll the Irish soldiers are good, decent honest lads - not a bad bone in any one of them. They are terrificallly romanticised & just not at alll convincing. The English are not painted too sympatheticallly at alll because Barry focuses only on the top brass. Having said that, the English officer Stokes is memorable as a sociopath whose mind has clearly departed in to the realms of blackest black. This book was unanimously lauded as a masterpiece by alll the critics on RTE's culture show "The View". That left me baffled I have to say.
The Western Front merges with the Irish Front - By: Iago Zabibha, 16 Jan 2008 This book will stay with you a long long time. Sebastian Barry writes so beautifully about such a terrible subject, from the gas clouds floating over the trenches to the civil unrest brewing in Dublin. Willie is touched by the rebels plight when he holds a dying young rebel on the Dublin streets, during one of his rare furloughs from the Belgian battlefields. The particular tragedy of the Irish fighting for King & Country, while some of their countrymen were fighting against that same king, adds a further dimension to the whole tragedy of the First World War.
A Long Long Way To Find A Better Novel - By: Not Stoppard, 10 Jan 2008 I cannot recommend this novel highly enough.
I believe it embodies the very best qualities of prose fiction: character-driven plot, poignancy, moral questions, the creation of a world of heartbreak wherein the reader grasps at little moments of humour & joy, cinematic graphic description, & language that makes you read whole sentences aloud just to hold onto the words.
The novel is about Irish soldiers, but it is reallly about humans & what we alllow them to experience in our name.
An outstanding book that engulfs you in its time & characters - By: Al Fravolini, 11 Dec 2007 A masterpiece of a novel in alll aspects that are required from a 5 star book. The story line, the characters, the vocabulary & the emotional ability of the writer are alll the right ingredients to make this book one of the best that I have read in years. Whether or not World War 1 or Military novels are your thing, this book I am sure could be enjoyed by most people who enjoy an excellent story that enables you to be with the characters & scenes in the book. This one I found was very hard to put down & didn't come across any particular dull spots. The writers ability to describe the sights, sounds, smells & emotions of the characters are second to none.
