The Temporary Gentleman

February 24, 2014
The latest novel from Barry (The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty) is a lyrical but ironic period story. Jack McNulty (Eneas’s younger brother), of Sligo, Ireland, first appears during WWII, as a soldier in Britain’s army, en route to Africa and admiring a peaceful sea, moments before a submarine torpedoes his ship. When we next see him, in 1957, Jack is living in self-imposed exile in Ghana, recalling his days as a soldier and civil servant, and as a suitor, lover, and husband to the haunting and haunted Mai Kirwan. Jack courts Mai avidly; then, after they marry, he gambles away her inheritance and allows creditors to take their house. Having left his two daughters in Ireland, Jack finds a close companion in Ghana: his houseboy, Tom Quaye. Jack must flee the country, however, after a drunken night out with Tom that ends in violence. Even while preparing to leave, Jack’s thoughts return to the past: helping his mother research their family’s history, defusing unexploded German bombs in England, and working as both a U.N. observer and a gunrunner in Africa. With this complex portrait of a man rooted in his hometown but drawn into a wider warring world, Barry again proves himself a prose artist and a skilled navigator of the rocky shoals of modern morality and Irish heritage.

May 15, 2014
Pensive, quietly lyrical novel by Irish writer Barry (On Canaan's Side, 2011, etc.), the sixth in a series of books whose stories are separate yet connected. Jack McNulty, the "temporary gentleman" of the title-that is, an Irishman made into an Englishman in order to serve the crown as an officer-hasn't had it easy. He's been torpedoed off the coast of West Africa during World War II, been made wiser and infinitely sadder in love, and now, tucked away in a relatively quiet corner of riotous Ghana in the time when colonial is verging on post-colonial, is steadily inebriating himself ("Into the small hours we drank the palm wine") into obliviousness. As with the consul in Under the Volcano, drunk gringos do not usually fare well in the tropics. This much we know, and we can foresee the consequences, but the strongest part of Barry's tale is in its visitation of the past, when McNulty falls deeply in love with Mai Kirwan, the rose of Sligo. There, Barry falls into Joycean reveries: "And what I see is an essence which is in itself solo and isolated, but still a woman replete, laden with gifts, musical, athletic, clever as a general, and seems to sit before me, even now, when she is gone, gone for ever, as real as though I could reach forward and touch her, so powerful, so completely present, and so lovely." Indeed. But why is Mai gone, and why is Jack in near exile at an outpost on the River Volta? Therein hangs Barry's tale, and though one romantically inclined might accuse him of a cynical attitude toward love, Jack's actions certainly remind us that a relationship that begins with good intentions so often deteriorates into the idly contemptuous-especially when copious amounts of alcohol are involved.Grim, even cautionary, from first to last. But, for all that, a beautifully written story of a love lost, and inevitably so.

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April 15, 2014
Much of Jack McNulty's life has been lost in the fog of alcoholism. What he does remember, though, he sets down in writing from his quarters in mid-1950s Ghana, reviewing with regret his path through a troubled marriage and a war. Looking back at his younger self with affectionate pity, Jack unspools his relationship with the high-spirited Mai from its bright beginning through its descent into anger and blame. The book is the sixth in a series of separate but connected novels by Irish writer Barry. Jack is the brother of the title character in Barry's debut novel, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998). Barry's prose has a dreamlike quality, with stream-of-consciousness passages capturing the memory of wartime bombings. Although McNulty is not a man to be admired, the raw elegance of his storytelling has its own beauty. The Temporary Gentleman is an arresting account of self-deception and the power of will to pretend all is well, even as the bottom falls out.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

December 1, 2013

Costa Award winner Barry turns in the story of Irishman Jack McNulty, a "temporary gentleman" because his commission in the British Army during World War II wasn't permanent. But Jack's real reason for writing his memoirs in Accra, Ghana, in 1957, is to sort out his marriage to the beautiful, high-spirited Mai Kirwan, who eventually escaped.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2014

Expanding on characters and events in his preceding novels, Barry (On Canaan's Edge) tells the story of Jack McNulty, a "temporary gentleman" because his commission in the British Army during World War II wasn't made permanent. In 1957, McNulty finds himself in Accra, Ghana, far from his Sligo, Ireland, home, writing about his unlikely romance and life with the beautiful Mai Kirwan. An engineer who worked as a sapper during the war, McNulty had failed to develop with Mai a strong foundation for their tempestuous marriage. Subsequently, he could neither repair the damage he wreaked over the course of their life together nor lessen all the hurt he caused. After Mai's untimely death, McNulty seeks redemption in postcolonial Africa, finding solace in writing and the friendship of a Ghanese soldier. While there, he runs afoul of a local criminal. Readers are left to wonder whether McNulty, like Mai, dies before his time or writes himself out of his own story. Either way, he remains the author of his own sad fate. VERDICT Like Barry's other characters, Jack McNulty is both noble and terribly flawed. Fans of Roddy Doyle's "Last Roundup" trilogy will appreciate this book's bold lyricism, unforgettable characters, and epic historicism. [See Prepub Alert, 11/18/13.]--John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2014

Expanding on characters and events in his preceding novels, Barry (On Canaan's Edge) tells the story of Jack McNulty, a "temporary gentleman" because his commission in the British Army during World War II wasn't made permanent. In 1957, McNulty finds himself in Accra, Ghana, far from his Sligo, Ireland, home, writing about his unlikely romance and life with the beautiful Mai Kirwan. An engineer who worked as a sapper during the war, McNulty had failed to develop with Mai a strong foundation for their tempestuous marriage. Subsequently, he could neither repair the damage he wreaked over the course of their life together nor lessen all the hurt he caused. After Mai's untimely death, McNulty seeks redemption in postcolonial Africa, finding solace in writing and the friendship of a Ghanese soldier. While there, he runs afoul of a local criminal. Readers are left to wonder whether McNulty, like Mai, dies before his time or writes himself out of his own story. Either way, he remains the author of his own sad fate. VERDICT Like Barry's other characters, Jack McNulty is both noble and terribly flawed. Fans of Roddy Doyle's "Last Roundup" trilogy will appreciate this book's bold lyricism, unforgettable characters, and epic historicism. [See Prepub Alert, 11/18/13.]--John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.