At Swim, Two Boys (Hardcover)

by Jamie O'Neill (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
You may have read the hype. Irishman Jamie O'Neill was working as a London hospital porter when his 10-year labor of love, the 200,000-word manuscript of At Swim, Two Boys, written on a laptop during quiet patches at work, was suddenly snapped up for a hefty six-figure advance. For once, the book fully deserves the hype.

In the spring of 1915, Jim Mack and "the Doyler," two Dublin boys, make a pact to swim to an island in Dublin Bay the following Easter. By the time they do, Dublin has been consumed by the Easter Uprising, and the boys' friendship has blossomed into love--a love that will in time be overtaken by tragedy. O'Neill's prose, playing merrily with vocabulary, syntax, and idiom, has unsurprisingly drawn comparisons to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, but in his creation of comic characters (such as Jim's pathetic but irrepressible father) and in the sheer scale of his work, Charles Dickens springs to mind first. But Dickens never wrote a love story between young men as achingly beautiful as this.

In the character of Anthony MacMurrough, who is haunted by voices as he pursues his illegal and dangerous desire for Dublin boys, O'Neill has created a complex and fascinating center to his novel, rescuing the love story from mawkishness, and allowing a serious meditation on history, politics, and desire. For as Ireland seeks its own future free of British government, so Jim, Doyle, and MacMurrough look back to Sparta to find a way to live. As Dr Scrotes, one of MacMurrough's voices, commands:

Help these boys build a nation of their own. Ransack the histories for clues to their past. Plunder the literature for words they can speak.

In this massive, enthralling, and brilliant debut, Jamie O'Neill has indeed done just that: provided a nation for what Walt Whitman calls, in O'Neill's epigraph, "the love of comrades." --Alan Stewart, Amazon.co.uk

From Library Journal
Published last year in Great Britain, this novel has been compared to works by James Joyce (or Flann O'Brien, whose At Swim-Two-Birds the title plays on), but it has more in common with the film Chariots of Fire in its painterly depiction of male athleticism and relationships. The sheltered son of a pro-British shopkeeper, 16-year-old Jim develops a doting and eventually homosexual relationship with Doyler, a bright boy from an impoverished family, as the two train for an ambitious swim across Dublin Bay on Easter 1916, a date that happens to coincide with a planned Republican uprising. Both become entangled with McMurrough, scion of wealthy Irish gentry, who is back in Dublin following imprisonment in England for indecent behavior. Jim is too na ve and Doyler too politically sophisticated for their years, while McMurrough is typecast as an Oscar Wilde figure. Still, these are rich characterizations, and together with the playfully rendered Irish dialect they outweigh the book's imperfections. O'Neill also offers gorgeous descriptions of the Dublin environs and remarkable details of the period. Recommended for most fiction collections. Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1st Scribner ed edition (March 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743222946
• ISBN-13: 978-0743222945
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (101 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #583,288 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Remarkable Epic Saga, March 11, 2002

By	Exguyparis "exguyparis" (Lansdowne, PA USA) - See all my reviews

I am exhausted, having stayed up all night to finish At Swim, Two Boys. This is a remarkable work on many levels. In one sense, this is a love story of the Oscar Wilde variety, so a number of readers will be put off. In another sense, it is a powerful condemnation of the Catholic Church, so others will be offended. It is a history of Irish music, Irish conflict, Irish class, Irish Civil War. It is comic, tragic, epic, and moving.

Jamie O'Neill's characters ring true in terms of dialogue, motivation, and depth. Anthony MacMurrough's internal dialogues with his inner voices/vices is fascinating; it brings to mind the realistic imagined beings in "A Beautiful Mind." The adolescent pains and pangs of Jim Mack and Doyle ring true. Longing, loyalty, and lust are artfully conjured. Every character is someone I would like to know-the comic/tragic/punny father of Jim, the powerful McMurrough (childless) matriarch, the whiskered, wise aunt.

O'Neill's descriptions of the land and sea paint a vivid portrait of the beauty of Ireland, and his painting of human and civil conflict is superb. This book humanizes the Irish conflict. It captures and caresses many aspects of Irish culture. And it is a beautiful love story.

I will read this book again to explore its depths, its masterful dialogues and dialects, its drama and beauty. The comparisons to Joyce and Dickens will not seem excessive if you dive into this glorious book.

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A straight reader's response, May 27, 2002

By A Customer

This is easily the best novel I've read this year. Anyone who can't relate to the universal, and universally appealing, themes that O'Neill treats in this ambitious work simply isn't reading with either an open mind or an open heart.

This is not a "genre" novel; it's outstanding writing by any standards one could think to apply. The story is tightly crafted, rich and complex, and the characters are unforgettable. And yes, as some reviewers discovered to their chagrin, a number of them display the moral ambiguity so characteristic of our species.

I gave this novel to my wife when I finished it, and recommended it to my (also straight) 22-year-old son. If you love fine writing and aren't obsessed with hating those whose sexual orientation puts them in the minority, you'll be deeply moved by this novel.

58 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Pal o' me heart, so he was.", April 29, 2002

By	H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The tragedy of this book is that thoughtful people who might overwise read it may not because they perceive it as a "gay" novel, whatever that means. This is a gay novel in the way BELOVED is a black novel or PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT is a Jewish novel. A book that anyone who loves serious literature should read, it has all the things I look for in a good novel: an involved plot, wonderful character development and beautiful language. If you believe the old fashioned novel is dead, At SWIM TWO BOYS should convince you otherwise. It actually feels like a 19th century novel in its epic quality. Yes, the three main characters are gay; and this book is as good as any-- perhaps better than any with gay characters I can recall. Almost 600 pages long-- you will be amazed at how quickly the pages fly by-- the novel is set in Ireland in 1915 and 1916. The three main characters, two teenage boys, Jim and Doyler and an adult, MacMurrough, become as real to you as your friends and family. These characters possess a resilience and courage that will make you care for them desperately. Ultimately they will break your heart.

Mr. O'Neill's prose is fine indeed. One example: there is a wonderful scene when MacMurrough watches Jim leave him. "A terrible fear shook him, a fear for his boy and what the future might hold. Lest he should stumble and the crowd should find him. For we live as angels among the Sodomites. And every day the crowd finds some one of us out. . . There is no grand mistake. Aristotle wrote something that Augustine got wrong that Aquinas codified in law. . . What hates is madness. There's no reason, only madness. . . Who but a madman could revile this boy?" This is NOT the love that dare not speak its name.

Words used to describe this novel sound trite: "honor," "optimism," "friendship," "patriotism," "love." We can only hope Mr. O'Neill does not take 10 years to write another novel.