Beatlebone

September 14, 2015
In his second novel, Barry (City of Bohane) imagines John Lennon in the year 1978, deep in a funk and trying to visit Dorinish, aka Beatle Island—an island in Clew Bay, in the west of Ireland, that Lennon owned. But the press is on his tail, the weather is terrible, and all the islands look alike. Lennon and his Irish driver, Cornelius, lie low, go to a local bar (where Lennon is passed off as Cousin Kenneth from England), and, mostly, talk. Not much happens—there is rain, wind, and mist; Lennon has recurring thoughts of his parents and the Liverpool of his youth; there’s an acrid encounter with some ’60s holdouts. The talk, however, is beautiful: half prose, half song. It’s Irish and sentimental and sly and funny and obscene, covering suicidal cows, the pleasures of cough medicine, The Muppet Show, and the way certain places exert a palpable emotional pull. Two chapters are outliers: a funny/grim one set later on, with Lennon trying to make a record, and one covering Barry’s own time in Liverpool and Dorinish. This latter section, odd and lovely, seems like it could have been an author’s note, but it pays off, reminding us how writing merges memory and imagination to connect the living and the dead. Agent: Lucy Luck, Lucy Luck Associates.

Starred review from September 15, 2015
A famous musician's 1978 pilgrimage to an island off the west coast of Ireland takes several detours, abetted by his memories and his minder, in this original, lyrical, genre-challenging work. Barry set his remarkable first novel, City of Bohane (2011), some 40 years in the future. Here, he looks back almost 40 years as he imagines a 37-year-old John Lennon hoping he can cure a creative block with a few days alone on the tiny island he owns. When he arrives in western Ireland, he learns that reporters are in pursuit, and he struggles to dodge them with the help of his driver/facilitator, Cornelius, who stashes him at one point in the strange Amethyst Hotel. There, John, a veteran of primal scream therapy, encounters people who believe screaming and ranting at one another is good for the soul and psyche. In the course of this miniodyssey, John's mind wends through his past, growing up in Liverpool, a girlfriend named Julia, and his Irish antecedents. He has brilliant, funny, almost musical dialogue with Cornelius. Then, after 200 pages, the author/narrator breaks in and explains how he has tried "to spring a story" from some historical facts. He also retraces what might have been John's steps, including poking through the now-ruined Amethyst. A photograph of the hotel printed on one page suggests W.G. Sebald and the porous membrane between fiction and reality. The closing section features more delightful dialogue, now between John and his recording engineer, before the musician breaks into a Molly Bloom-esque monologue, complete with a lilting last line about "a sadness" in his mother's voice "that tells me the way that time moves and summer soon across the trees will spin its green strands." Nothing at all like Barry's award-winning debut novel, this may be a risky follow-up, but it's intriguing at every turn, and Barry's prose can be as mesmerizing as some of his hero's songs.

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Starred review from October 15, 2015
All John Lennon wants is to be alone on the island he bought off the west coast of Ireland. That is the simple premise behind acclaimed Irish writer Barry's (Dark Lies the Island, 2013) singular new novel, in which he portrays the Lennon we know: acerbic, angry, confused, and, ultimately, lost. The only drama here is the remote chance that the Beatles-mad press may catch up with him; otherwise, the slim narrative consists of Lennon's painful ruminations and the dialogue between the singer and the people who are trying to get him to the elusive island of Dornish. Barry's Lennon displays a particular affection for a sad Beach Boys' song ( Well, it's been building up inside of me / for oh, I don't know how long ) as Lennon recalls his mother's premature death. Barry, a great poet of a novelist, devotes an entire chapter to this tale's backstory: how he succeeded in getting to Dornish. With echoes of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and The White Album, Barry has created an unusual novel, remarkable in structure as well as tone, that channels the contradictory nature of Lennon himself.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

November 15, 2015

In May 1978, John Lennon attempts an escape to Dorinish, a remote island he owns off the coast of Mayo in western Ireland, where he hopes to spend three days rekindling his creativity. Pursued by paparazzi, Lennon entrusts his person and privacy to Cornelius O'Grady, who guarantees to deliver the mercurial genius to his isolated outpost without interference from the press and fans. Instead, O'Grady chaperones Lennon on an elliptical anabasis through the magical Mayo countryside. The artist eventually makes it to Dorinish, but only after spending one evening in a haunted rural pub and another at a commune of primal-scream therapy adherents. Along the way, Lennon resolves to record "beatlebone," a sonic and musical expression of his Irish odyssey. VERDICT The best moments in Barry's second novel (which follows the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award-winning City of Bohane) happen when Lennon plays the straight man to the extraordinary O'Grady. An expository chapter describing Barry's own research journey for the book would have been a brilliant afterword but disrupts an otherwise extraordinary fiction that reads like a cross between Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Ciaran Carson's Shamrock Tea. [See Prepub Alert, 6/1/15.]--John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2015

Barry broke out big with his darkly brilliant debut, City of Bohane, winner of the International Dublin IMPAC Literary Award, and has since published two showstopping collections. Here, after appearing with foresightful Graywolf, he's getting his first big-house publication in the United States, and his subject matter will have broad appeal. In a creative slump and fatefully approaching 40, John Lennon quits New York and flies across the Atlantic to locate the island off Ireland's west coast he had purchased nine years previously. A shape-shifting driver (Irish magic!) takes him on a trip to self-understanding...or something.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.