The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty [Hardcover]

Sebastian Barry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1998

Recently lionized for his play The Steward of Christendom, Sebastian Barry was hailed by The New York Times for his "rare mark of theatrical greatness." The New Yorker called the play "a majestic work." Now, with this astounding first novel, he enters the territory of Frank McCourt and James Joyce. When Barry's hero, the romantic innocent Eneas McNulty, signs up to fight with the British in World War I. An Ireland wracked by the Troubles blacklists him as a traitor--and it is his childhood friend, Jonno, who has been ordered to assassinate him. He is pursued by IRA hit men across a lifetime, to Texas, Nigeria, Omaha Beach, and the remote Isle of Man. A modern-day Aeneas, he is a classical hero disguised beneath an ordinary, tragicomic life. His wanderings embody both the strife and glory of Ireland's history, in a book that, as the Irish Times wrote of his famous play, is "wonderful...lyrical and profound, extremely funny, extraordinarily observant...hauntingly sad."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

These days, Frank McCourt would seem to have cornered the market on lyrical depictions of Celtic poverty. But never fear, Sebastian Barry--the brilliant Irish playwright, poet, and prose-wrangler--is here. His new novel, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty recounts the odyssey of a small-town innocent, who grows up in circumstances more bucolic, but no less threadbare, than McCourt's. It's clear from the very first paragraph, however, that Barry means to take a wide-angle view of his Irish urchin: "In the middle of the lonesome town, at the back of John Street, in the third house from the end, there is a little room. For this small bracket in the long paragraph of the street's history, it belongs to Eneas McNulty. All about him the century has just begun, a century some of which he will endure, but none of which will belong to him."

Having handily survived his Sligo childhood, Eneas joins the British Army in time for World War I--and upon his return home, finds himself shunned as a collaborator. Tarred with this very Britannic brush, he goes one better and enlists in the Royal Irish Constabulary. Alas, this move only cements his fate as a marked man, and his father is soon issued a warning: "Let your son keep out of Sligo if he wants to keep his ability to walk." With a price on his head, Eneas commences a life of wandering, from Mexico to Africa to Nigeria (which the moonlight, he notices, "brings closer to Ireland.") From time to time he sneaks back to Sligo and is promptly expelled.

In another author's hands, this epic of dislocation could well be a bitter one. Yet the stoical and simple-minded Eneas is surprisingly free of anguish, and even his constant fear "has become something else, could he dare call it strength, a privacy anyhow." And the reader, at least, has the delightful distraction of Barry's prose, in which the occasional Joycean notes are entirely subsumed by the author's own colloquial brilliance. In the end, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is less a novel than an exhibition of bardic fireworks--a latter-day Aeniad that's actually worthy of the name. --James Marcus

From Publishers Weekly

Known in England as a playwright (The Steward of Christendom), novelist and poet, Barry brings all the attendant skills to this stunning novel, with its evergreen theme of the parallels between a personal life and the political life of a country?in this case the fiery history of 20th century Ireland. Eneas McNulty is born in 1900 in Sligo, the eldest child of a dancing mother and a musician father. By the age of 10, he has forged a magnetic bond with his chum Jonno Lynch, an orphan and Eneas's lifelong opposite. WWI is the pivotal event in Eneas's life; he loses his footing and never regains it. Driven by a vague dream of fighting in French fields, he enlists in the British Merchant Navy and finds himself in Galveston, Tex., hauling machine parts. He returns home to find postwar Ireland in political turmoil and economic dire straits. Jonno, who has devoted himself to the "world of shillings and employment," won't acknowledge Eneas because of his connection to the British. After a jobless year, he signs up with the Royal Irish Constabulary, which cements the community's conviction that he's a British loyalist. To take his name off the "black list," Jonno and his crowd demand that Eneas become an assassin against the RIC. While Eneas doesn't fear his own death, he can't kill anyone else. And so his permanent exile begins. He works as a herring fisherman in the North Atlantic, joins the British army for WWII, digs a canal in Nigeria, opens a hotel for homeless veterans in London's Isle of Dogs. Eneas is in many ways an Everyman in this century of the migrant and the dispossessed, but Barry is careful to intersperse flashes of humor as well as moments of bone-deep longing in his protagonist's bleak odyssey. Work and the rare moments of fellow-feeling it produces are Eneas's solace as even his memories of home are salted with the menace of the men who've vowed to hunt him down. Barry's lyric prose, astute use of detail and poignant insight are a fit match for his tragic theme of an innocent buffeted by history.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1st Am edition edition (August 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670878286
• ISBN-13: 978-0670878284
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #466,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. His play, The Steward of Christendom, first produced in 1995, won many awards and has been seen around the world. His novel, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty, appeared in 1998. He lives in Wicklow with his wife and three children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely hated to have this book end., September 9, 1999

By 

Richard Thurston (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (Paperback)

A beautiful, sad book. Eneas McNulty is an innocent set loose in a world treacherous and unforgiving but he remains gentle, kind and amazingly generous through all that befalls him. A fascinating look at 20th century Ireland through the eyes of a wonderfully realized character.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars more stars than 5 needed for this novel, March 9, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (Paperback)

This has to be the best novel written, at least in the English language, in the latter half of the 20th century, and I've read A LOT of the best books of this time period. It is simply amazing, and I'm not even going to give a word of it away in this review. It has everything that makes a novel good, but most striking is the sheer poetry of the language. An absolute masterpiece.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where does Ireland get all these great authors?, September 16, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (Paperback)

The Irish have always been known as great storytellers, but now they're all turning into great writers as well, and it seems they're coming out of the woodwork. Sebastian Barry's The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty places the protagonist in the small village of Sligo where he is an innocent among angry partisans. When he chooses to alleviate his problems of employment by taking a job with the Royal Irish Constabulary, the British-led police force, he irrevocably alters his life - as you might imagine! With beautiful language and ethereal descriptive passages, Barry allows readers to follow Eneas' travels and travails - all of us hoping for a happy ending.