“And there is no thrashing about of branches to disturb the children, who, after all, are city children, and need time to adjust, and not just to the butter. Salted, unsalted, that is the difference, salted and unsalted life” (9).“A day of hardship is a long day, good times shorten the day, and yet a life in itself is but the breadth of a farthing” (10).“I am thinking about nothing, slipping from one idle thing to the next as one does beside a fire” (10).“Billy Kerr…is a man with no qualities. There is probably a Billy Kerr, or someone like him, in all human affairs. Otherwise all would be well continually” (10-11).“I gather her in my arms. She is only gentle bones. To think a person is a soul wrapped in this cage of bones. What an arrangement, how can we possibly be protected?” (12-13).“Then he hovers there. There is no end to his ability to hover” (20).“Neither is speaking. There is a sort of tea-drinking silence that country people have perfected over the centuries. A lot can get said in those silences, they are dangerous elements” (27).“…well down from the sacred precinct of the hearth, where the human animals gathered and took their farthings of ease at nightfall” (46).“There’s more than Billy the pony in those tears, that silver deluge that marks her rough cheeks. There’s other things, the tolling bells of other matters, the arrangement of little things that afflict us all, and give strength and engine to our tears, whenever they should fall. They are the tears of an ageing woman without a mate, I must surmise. But whether Billy Kerr could know this is another matter. Men know nothing but their own bellies, and if there is space for their feet they think all is well” (56).“…the squeals out of them like the poor pig when I go to cut his throat, or feed him, one or the other” (57).“The turf fire mutters in the murky hearth. The clock seems less anxious to seek the future, its tick more content, slower. All is in the balance of a kind, the weight and the butter in the scales in sufficient harmony” (67).“Her floury hands go to her thighs and she rest them there, imprinting the soft map of her palms” (67).“Heavily the old clock tock-tocks in the dresser, it is a clock in fact without a tick to its name, only that old banging tock tock. Perhaps it was cheaper bought without the tick. Clocks for sale, clocks for sale, reduced price, owing to the lack of a tick” (69).“…the silence not a real silence, but a roar of anticipation” (70).“The murk of the darkened daylight hangs in the room. It is they who own the stormy sunlight outside” (71).“Religion was a terrible burden to us as little girls, excepting the excitement after mass, when you could count your cousins alive on the church steps, and dead in the churchyard” (75).“Sarah sleeps, the old embroidered blanket over her face, its hart and hounds forever caught hunting across the low, unstable hills of her breast” (82).“’My father will not even kill a bluebottle, though bluebottles eat poos,’ he says, gravely” (117).“True, I never read those books, but lapped such knowledge from my father’s garrulous knees!” (136).“It is like Eden, my own father used to say, in the bright dispensations of the summer months. These days that, even as you live through them, seem like memories, caught up as they are in the lost happinesses of other, similar days” (168).“I would like to cleave his breastbone with a slash hook, now slash hooks are the topic…” (185).“In the old days, a passing cart could not easily decline to give your bum a perch” (196).“She pushes open her door and stands in the morsel of yard” (205).“Even the halves of songs I know, our way of talking, our very work and ways of work, will be forgotten. Now I understand it has always been so, a fact which seemed to heal my father’s wound, and now my own. I think in the end he understood it too, and gained his salvation from that new courage he found, to go naked and unadorned in the next world. Even great kingdoms—Ireland, England herself—are subject to this law. How could this simple yard in Kelsha be exempt?” (227).
Has anyone else noticed? In movies, a character's name alone can define.I submit to you: Annie.In the movies, Annies are always: cute/pretty/beautiful; perky/down-to-earth; inquisitive to intelligent/well-read; loyal/wholesome; a perfect woman for a good man.Think about it.In Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner is devoted to 'Annie', in jeans and flannel shirts, a Berkeley degree, who believes in magic and the first amendment.Sleepless in Seattle. Tom Hanks will never marry again. Except his son finds him 'Annie'. "You're 'Annie'?" And they hold hands forever after as Jimmy Durante sings 'Make Someone Happy'.Father of the Bride. Of course his daughter's name is 'Annie'. And they play a one-on-one game of basketball.Bull Durham. Susan Sarandon is 'Annie', who knows all about baseball and literature and gets weak at the greatest soliloquy since all that Hamlet stuff.Overboard. Goldie Hawn is Joanna Stayton, filthy rich and insufferable, until she meets a carpenter (Kurt Russell) who rescues her, but she has amnesia. He renames her 'Annie' and she becomes lovable, funny and, well, all the things she could not be as a 'Joanna'.Bridesmaids. (See, I'm current). The heroine (Annie) is down to earth and genuine, unlike that rich girl.Annie Hall. Eponymous. Looks good in a tie and baggy slacks and a hat. (Annies always look good in hats).Annie. 'I don't need sunshine now to turn my skies to blue. I Don't Need Anything But You.' This is not a coincidence.I have a mother and a daughter. Both Annie. If you made a movie about them, you would have to name them 'Annie'. I am that lucky.------ ------ ------Annie Dunne is not Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn or Amy Madigan. She is old, and hunch-backed (she prefers 'bowed') and bitter. Yet I loved her so.There is something in the lilt of the best Irish writers that soothes me. Yes, even a hard case like me. There is no heart so black that it does not love a lullaby.A bad man is made to swear as to the truth near the end of the book. There are only two books upon which to swear. One is the Bible, the other the collected works of Shakespeare. Which one would you push forward?Annie Dunne will linger. I swear.
What do You think about Annie Dunne (2003)?
The writing is beautiful. The story is of changing times; what once was is no more or quickly fading. Though I found the story slow I enjoyed seeing Annie Dunne's thoughts versus her words.Annie struggles within herself to know her own self and place in the world. She is critical of others until she is shown otherwise, awkward in communicating with others. Though seemingly gruff I think she has a desire to love and be loved. It seems her own childhood hurts and self-loathing are large factors in how she has come to view the world. She fiercely loves her great nephew and great niece and struggles with how to best care for them while they are in her charge. While being the caretaker of the children, she also struggles with her own future and worth.
—Sarah
Simply superb. This is the third novel I’ve read by Sebastian Barry (the others were The Secret Scripture and A Long Long Way) and he’s yet to disappoint. I doubt he ever will though. I hate to descend into stereotype (although I really don’t do so disparagingly), but after reading just one sentence you know these are the words of an Irish writer, and a very fine one at that. If you want to experience something of what life was like living and eking out a tiny agricultural living in long-ago 1950s Ireland, read this evocative book.As other reviewers have said, there’s little plot in this comparatively slender novel, although a dramatic event near the end had me forgetting to breathe, so involved was I in the characters by then. Annie, her cousin Sarah and the children entrusted to their care for a few weeks are beautifully and so sympathetically drawn.Mr Barry has the ability, as he also showed in The Secret Scripture, to completely inhabit the minds of women, particularly elderly ones, and invite you to join him, and he does so here with sharp insight and great humanity.What this fine book lacks in page-turning plot it more than compensates for in wonderful, lyrical prose that’s best savoured slowly, lingeringly rolling each evocative phrase around your brain – no, your soul – like luxuriating in a long warm comforting bath. Just brilliant.
—John Needham
Annie Dunne is an elderly spinster living with her cousin in the rural Ireland of the late 1950s. Hers is a small life where she has never really felt wanted. Her nephew leaves his son and daughter with Annie while he goes to London in search of work, and the arrival of the children shakes up her dull and marginalised life, with positive and negative consequences.As a child in the late 1960s I spent a lot of time on my grandparents farm in Northern Scotland, and there is much in this novel that resonated with me as a consequence. The details of the farm's daily routine, milking the cow and making butter took me right back to my childhood. Barry also portrays well the sense of the isolation of the countryside and how unexpected visitors can either be a joy or a threat.Annie is an interesting character - she knows that she has been missing something all her life, but doesn't fully understand what it is. The children open up a part of her she didn't know she had, but also increase her capacity to be hurt and isolated all the more.There isn't much plot here, aside from a couple of more major events, but that too is realistic I think as small events blow up to a greater importance in the quiet rural life.A wonderful character study with a melancholy and affecting tone.
—CuteBadger
