Annie Dunne

By Sebastian Barry

There was so much about this book that I did not like, like the almost prose-like style it is written in. The author elaborates on the simplest little thoughts of the main characters which can be a good thing but for this novel it just did not work. There were interesting bits in between, and that is what kept me reading, but there were pages and pages in between that contained nothing of value to the story and which caused me to lose interest in the story all together. It is a novel where nothing happens many times over.

Annie Dunne is an unmarried woman in her sixties who live and work on a small farm in a remote and beautiful part of Wicklow, Ireland, with her cousin Sarah. In the summer of 1959 they are asked to care for their grand-niece and grand-nephew whose parents are going to England to look for work.

Unfortunately for the reader, nothing much happens except for copious descriptions of the daily agricultural round, the introduction of farm labourer Billy Kerr, with his ambiguous attentions to Sarah, and some hints about possible child sexual abuse. The latter is, however, abandoned unresolved, as if the author could not be bothered to do anything more with it.