The Whereabouts Of Eneas McNulty (1999) - Plot & Excerpts
"He ate a feed of sheep's brains the once, and as he ate he knew sorrowfully that his father's brain and his own brain were such as he toyed with on his fork. He never ate such a sorrowful meal before nor since" (20)."You can sense the press of men behind them, the truer flood of men, held in just as yet by the ramparts of the wishes of their wives" (20-21)."'You dog,' he says, 'you low dog on all fours, you poor fighting pup with your tail bitten off by a tinker at birth.'This is an obscure insult, and has no force even to him" (25)."If his father Tom got his hands on that loaf it would be askew in a trice, in the sewing of a wren's mitten" (26)."An artist. His mother is an artist with the bread knife" (27)."...the stars jostling for room in the windowpanes" (32)."He is laughing out loud, drunk as a tequila maggot" (41).“...His mother detests them all, and all their ways. She things the Protestants have cloven feet. But if they have, they put lovely shoes over them, as a rule” (100).“True enough, the stars over Greenland are so right they are tiny tears of fire in the sky, and the unseen seals and ice-coloured bears of the flows are dryer than Simon Cousins and Eneas. And that's a thing to engender silence” (129).“It is true that such work repeated and repeated, with its circles of journey and seasons, weaves a pattern as simple as a country bedspread that gives the years the sensation of brevity” (130-131)."An Englishman's soul appears when he speaks of his favoured team" (158).“'He's as deaf as a plank to rumour, you wouldn't get an innuendo through to him if you used a crow-bar'” (198).“His heart's gone on him now because she can't snap her fingers but said 'Snap your fingers' instead. That's dangerously endearing” (205).“Africa in his Sligo head before he goes to Africa is a strange little tinful of fourpenny thoughts (208).“Moonlight brings Nigeria closer to Ireland” (213).“And the great man drives a motorbike at the greatest speed he can muster, his reckless wake a wonderful flower, a bush of red dust” (218).“...the palatial streets of Sligo with the rain-bedappled parcels” (259). *I'm just taken with the phrase “rain-bedappled parcels.”“He cannot help thinking of the sky as a realm of jewels but he supposes it is all fire and ruin jus the same. All fire and ruin” (279).
Barry, Sebastian. THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS MCNULTY. (1998). ****. This was Barry’s second novel, and, of course, I’ve been reading them all out of order. There is a constant and recurring theme that has run throughout all of them, though, that makes you believe that Barry is realy writing a theme and variation on the same book many times. This novel focuses on Eneas McNulty, a man from Sligo, who grows up poor. His mom and dad both work at the insane asylum, sewing clothes for the inmates, but his dad has his heart in music, the music that people love to dance to on a Saturday night. Eneas finds that Sligo has no opportunities of employment for young men, so he joins up with the Royal Irish Constabulary after the first world war is over. This turns out not to have been a good decision at the time, since all the young men around him are becoming another kind of soldier, intent on winning freedom from eight hundred years of oppression by the English. To these men, Eneas is a traitor, and he becomes caught up in a murderous web of reprisals. Eneas is now shunned and threatened by his old friends, especially his boyhood friend, Jonno Lynch, who is now one of the IRA’s enforcers. He is now forced to leave Sligo by these men in dark coats who have placed him under sentence of death. He joins a fishing fleet that trolls for herring off the coast of Scotland, then enlists in the army to go and fight in France. he is one of the stragglers of Dunkirk, but is taken captive by a Frenchman of dubious sanity to help him work on his vineyards. When he finally leaves France and travels back to Sligo, he finds that the death warrant is still in effect. Again, he is forced to flee the country and indentures himself for three years to an excavating firm in Lagos, where he meets Harcourt, a Nigerian who soon becomes his good friend. Throughout all of his running from country to country, Eneas prerserves his lust for life and his belief in the universal goodness of man. When he has become old, he heads for the Isle of Dogs, where he unites with Harcourt to set up a hotel for indigent seamen. His end comes in the form of a last generous sacrifice that ultimately redeems his lifetime of loss. Recommended.
What do You think about The Whereabouts Of Eneas McNulty (1999)?
I really enjoyed The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry and the small mentions of Eneas McNulty within that story had me intregued. When I found out that there was a book about Eneas I was quite excited to read it. Unfortunately I found The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty didn’t meet up to my expectations. It didn’t have half the draw of The Secret Scripture and even the parts that I did find interesting were far too brief. There were enough interesting bits to keep me going right to the end of the book but by the end I was mainly just waiting to finish the story. There were many elements that could have been exciting or moving but they just didn’t quite meet up. I did find some sections moving but they were over all too briefly.I found the writing a little inconsistent, at the beginning it was written as if Eneas himself was speaking- although it was written in the third person, it was a pretty stereotypical Irish voice, but after a while it became less Irish and it seemed less like it was Eneas speaking.I still found the bits about Roseanne (the protagonist of The Secret Scripture) intriguing, so I might have been somewhat interested in reading The Secret Scripture if I had read The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty first but I think based on my enjoyment of this book I wouldn’t have actually read it.
—Lucy
It is easy to get lost in the beauty of the language. I found myself having to re-read paragraphs because I'd forgotten to pay attention to the plot, which is fairly simple but you do have to pay attention.Sentences like: Moonlight brings Nigeria closer to Ireland.and The atomic bomb brings the men home from every quarter of the earth because the war is not so much over as stunned back into history...Every few pages I found myself interrupting my roommate to read a few sentences that were so lovely they had to be shared Right Now.The story is also good and well-done. I believed in Eneas' life and experiences as if it were a biography and not fiction. He is born in 1900 (based on various comments in the book) and raised in Sligo, Ireland and there is a sense that he is something of a wanderer his whole life, even before wandering was enforced by circumstances. He leaves for the British Merchant Marines at age 16 - so 1916 - and when he returns is not able to find work, so becomes a 'peeler', British again. His employment choices create hostile feelings against him in Sligo and he leaves Ireland, like so many have before him. I remember watching Man Without a Country in grade school, and at the time it did not sink in that the main character could never set foot on his native soil again, and what that might mean. Eneas' story made the idea much more clear.
—Ryan
This is a very enjoyable read not just because of the storyline and a well developed main character, but also because Sebastian Barry has such a beautiful lyrical prose style. Eneas McNulty was born in 1900 in Sligo in the west of Ireland into an average working class home. As a young man, he didn't get involved with the revolutionaries but chose instead, in order to earn a living, to join the police. That began a chain of events which forced him out of his country and affected the rest of his life. The reader is drawn into Eneas' life and mind and we keep wishing he would have a bit of luck and be happy. We then realise what happiness for Eneas means.
—Kate
