Here is a book which truly challenges my limited “reviewing” experience. Normally I think of the stuff I’ve read and written about with a sort of glib, facile overlay. I take what I read seriously; think about the writing seriously, but review the material with an intentionally superficial tone. I rarely read (or write) reviews which drone on and on about esoteric artistic merit and esthetic balance. While I may appreciate “heavy” stuff I try not to review a book in the same tone.
So I’m a little lost talking about At Swim, Two Boys. Jamie O’Neill, the author, we are told, took about ten years to complete this book. The care he took to achieve an authentic world, the world of 1916 Ireland, is amazing. I’m not a reader of history books, nor especially of historical novels so I was unprepared for this wonderful experience…and reading At Swim… is really a literary experience.
The novel is not easy to absorb initially for two reasons. First the times, the tools, the whole 1916 world uses different things than our world. So there is right away a vocabulary problem. But second, the author beautifully, authentically writes in a sort of antique brogue. Together this makes starting the book a bit daunting for the American reader. Alas I fear some will give up. If, however, you can stay the course through say sixty or so pages (the book is long, 562 pages) the aesthetic, artistic experience will be worth it!
The story tells of the relationship of two mid-adolescent boys, one poor, one shop–keeper class, their dealing with the political realities of pre-Easter rebellion Ireland, their interaction with the local aristocracy, and their attempt to understand not only their feelings toward each other but their feelings about their class, culture, government, and world.
I give away no ending when I say that the two young gay protagonists are caught up in historical forces which inevitably move, no drive, them to a tragic end.
So inexorable is the story line that I began wiping away tears of loss easily thirty pages before the conclusion.
Running parallel to the young men’s love story is the historical story of Irish history and the roles of the local aristocratic figures, Eva MacMurrough and her nephew, twenty something (and gay) Anthony. Tony is initially vaguely, but elegantly, predatory stalking both young men and actually seducing one. As the story unfolds he changes, grows and ultimately comes into his own as a sort of gay mentor to the boys.
The title is taken from the goal the boys set, to swim, to swim strongly enough to reach an island off the Irish coast and to do this by Easter Sunday 1916. The distance is not material but the image is central…achieving the goal is metaphor for the developing of their sexuality, their love. Although tragedy nearly strikes it is averted but only for a time.
This is not a book for everyone, It is hard to start. There is little titillation; there is an abundance of historical perspective. There is a beautiful tragic love story. Not your beach book this summer I’d say. What it is, finally, is one of the best books I’ve read recently.