Amazon.com
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
Book Description
Set during the year preceding the Easter Uprising of 1916 -- Ireland's brave but fractured revolt against British rule -- At Swim, Two Boys is a tender, tragic love story and a brilliant depiction of people caught in the tide of history. Powerful and artful, and ten years in the writing, it is a masterwork from Jamie O'Neill.
Jim Mack is a naïve young scholar and the son of a foolish, aspiring shopkeeper. Doyler Doyle is the rough-diamond son -- revolutionary and blasphemous -- of Mr. Mack's old army pal. Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of rock where gentlemen bathe in the nude, the two boys make a pact: Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, on Easter of 1916, they will swim to the distant beacon of Muglins Rock and claim that island for themselves. All the while Mr. Mack, who has grand plans for a corner shop empire, remains unaware of the depth of the boys' burgeoning friendship and of the changing landscape of a nation.
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Set in Dublin, At Swim, Two Boys follows the year to Easter 1916, the time of Ireland's brave but fractured uprising against British rule. O'Neill tells the story of the love of two boys: Jim, a naive and reticent scholar and the younger son of the foolish aspiring shopkeeper Mr. Mack, and Doyler, the dark, rough-diamond son of Mr. Mack's old army pal. Doyler might once have made a scholar like Jim, might once have had prospects like Jim, but his folks sent him to work, and now, schoolboy no more, he hauls the parish midden cart, with socialism and revolution and willful blasphemy stuffed under his cap. And yet the future is rosy, Jim's father is sure. His elder son is away fighting the Hun for God and the British Army, and he has such plans for Jim and their corner shop empire. But Mr. Mack cannot see that the landscape is changing, nor does he realize the depth of Jim's burgeoning friendship with Doyler. Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of rock where gentlemen bathe in the scandalous nude, the two boys meet day after day. There they make a pact: Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, Easter 1916, they will swim the bay to the distant beacon of Muglins Rock and claim that island for themselves. Ten years in the writing, At Swim, Two Boys has already caused a sensation in England and Ireland, earning lavish praise for its masterful portrayal of class, tradition, and the conflict that has haunted Ireland for centuries. Jamie O'Neill's poetic and evocative storytelling makes him a natural successor to James Joyce and Flann O'Brien. At its heart, At Swim, Two Boys is a tender and tragic love story that will resonate with all readers. But it is also a compelling and important work, a novel about people caught up in the tide of history -- set in a place and culture both unfamiliar and unforgettable.
Customer Reviews:
Not just a "gay" book........2007-08-16
I rarely review anything on this site--not books, not movies, not CDs. I never feel that strongly about a product. But this book is different. When I bought it, I was skeptical about all the hype. Usually with a book that is so universally loved you are setting yourself up for a disappointment. Not so with this. It surpasses the hype in so many ways.
First of all--yes, the three main characters are gsy, but this is in no way a "gay book". It is a romance novel, a war novel, a coming-of-age. It is epic, and purely Irish in its nature. Don't give up after the first few chapters. This definitely isn't American English. It isn't even British English. It's *Irish* English. The prose is dense but lyrical, and reads like a song or a poem. Even if you absolutely hate the characters or plot, I can't imagine anyone who bothers to read past chapter two not completely awestruck by Jamie O'Neill's use of language. This book was ten years in the writing, and it shows.
You probably already know the plot, so I won't annoy you with that. But this book will break your heart into a million little pieces and haunt you for the rest of your life. So read it. Right now.
rich, flowing prose and passion.......2007-06-18
It's always wonderful when an artist truly takes the time to let a work develop. This massive yet warmly flowing work of historic fiction is worth grazing through lovingly.
I needn't go into repeating the plot, which has been aptly written up in other reviews. Simply, if you want to enjoy a large and fully developed novel on a grand yet intimate scale.
A Boyish Bond.......2007-05-21
Read about the bond between two boys in this historical fiction novel set in the suburbs of Dublin, Ireland.
For Jim.......2007-05-16
I have to admit I had a hard time getting into this book. The first chapter especially, as it centers around Jim Mack's father and what is esentially a very foreign world, Ireland 1915. Even when the story shifts to the more genteel world (and language) of Eveline and Anthony MacMurrough, I still thought about putting the book down for lighter fare. I'm glad I didn't, because this book is an astonishing experience. My personal test of any great work of fiction is how much do I care about the characters. Would I want to know these people in real life? Absolutely! And even the most minor characters here are brought to vivid life. All three of the main characters touched my heart, but I loved Jim most of all, and I've even found myself asking "What would Jim do?" whenever I'm faced with a difficult situation. He is a wise, kind soul, and that makes his destruction even more infuriating (doesn't give anything away). All three men are swept up by Doyler's love of Ireland and his revolutionary leanings, and at one point the book goes on for an extended passage about his time in Dublin with the Citizen's Army. It gets a little, um, boring, but all of a sudden Doyler is asked if he misses Jim, and this is what he says: "I miss him, aye...He was pal o' me heart, so he was. I try not to think of him, only I can't get him off my mind. He's with me always day and night. I do see him places he's never been, in the middle of a crowd I see him. His face looks out from the top of a tram, a schoolboy wouldn't pass but I'm thinking it's him. I try to make him go away, for I'm a soldier now and I'm under orders. But he's always there and I'm desperate to hold him. I doubt I'm a man except he's by me." It's the most beautiful moment in what is ultimately a devastating work of art. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a movie version that is just as beautiful.
An atmospheric story of complex relationships.......2007-03-24
I'm usually not a big fan of historical fiction. It often tends toward too much melodrama as it attempts to build a story and characters around real, often complicated events. "At Swim" has some of these problems toward its end, but most of the story is a realistic narrative about the bond that develops between two adolescent boys, Jim & Doyler. Jim belongs to the petit bourgeois and Doyler to the poor, working class. The book is as much about social stratification as it is about sexuality. Both boys develop ties to MacMurrough, a young man who has been exiled to his Anglo-Irish aunt, after an embarrassing trial and imprisonment for soliciting a young mechanic. MacMurrough develops somewhat complicated relationships with both boys, particularly Doyler. He begins by paying Doyler for sex, but comes to be something of a mentor. Both Jim & MacMurrough provide outlets for Doyler's thwarted desires for social and economic advancement. Doyler is a socialist and engaged with one of the groups involved in the Easter Uprising of 1916.Tthe relationship between Jim & Doyler is one that gives voice to Doyler's gentleness and is one of many forces that challenge Jim. He is drawn Doyler's worldliness in matters of sex, politics, and other things, but he also is pulled by family's need for "respectability" and the teachings of the Church. The petit bourgeois world of his family pushes him toward social advancement, but also admonishes against "pride", an Irish working class sin, which often has held people back from education or economic advancement. Jim's father is caught in the same social trap--he is a Babbit-ish small businessman who unintentionally had let his own "airs" get in the way of a friendship with Doyler's father when they both were in the British Army. The story includes Mr. Mack's efforts to repair that tie, after he suffers the social slight of his older son's impregnating a local servant girls (that son, Gordie, is MIA in WWI when the pregnancy is revealed).
The book captures the social world of small town/suburban Dublin. Parts of the book reminded me of "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and "The Dubliners". I was less reminded of "Ulysses" and not concerned that O'Neil might be drawing from Joyce or anyone else. He could do far worse for inspiration and I didn't see any real "cribbing".
The book is heavy on Irish dialect, particularly, in the beginning, although I didn't have that much difficulty getting through it. It's not something that was transmitted through my Irish roots, but it's not that difficult to figure out. There's also a bit of Irish Gaelic, but that's typically translated. The book appears to have been published originally in the UK, so i am guessing that the primary audience was the Irish diaspora (which is huge) in England, as well as Northern Ireland, and of course, the Republic Of Ireland. So, it wasn't written for us Yanks and people who don't like that really shouldn't read the book.
I had two quibbles with "At Swim", which knocked off a star. The subplot about Gordie's baby is poorly integrated into the story. It seems like one of those elements that may have been larger in an earlier draft, but cut back as time goes on. One could see the baby as a violation of Gordie's exalted status in the house--he was Jim's admired role model and clearly his father's favored son. That he fathered a child and did it with a servant girls also is a blight against the Macks' precarious hold on middle class respectability. Much of the book is about social class and the injuries committed to less fortunate people by a wealthy, somewhat indolent gentry, represented by the MacMurroughs and Jim's classmates at the prep school where he attends as a scholarship boy.
We come to learn that MacMurrough's aunt is part of the Anglo-Irish support for the Uprising. Much of the early push for Irish independence came from this part of society, rather than from the mass of Catholic peasants. The Anglo-Irish tended toward the Anglican (some were Catholic), and should not be confused with the mostly Calvinist Protestants of Northern Ireland, who continue to favor union with Britain. Many involved in the fight for independence were social non-conformists and context makes it easier to see young MacMurrough as making a token contribution to the cause, at his aunt's insistence. The aunt's role as a funder & supporter is a bit sudden and overwrought. We're asked to believe that she was such an important figure that there was a mural of her at a rebel meeting hall. This aspect of the story (the aristocrat as rebel) could have been made a little more realistic and her role could have been introduced sooner and allowed to develop more naturally. The ending is tragic and one we expect, but is handled with less bathos than might be expected from the set-up. In the end, this is a coming of age story about Jim, yet we're not sure where life will take him next.
Average customer rating:
- "The struggle for Irish Ireland...is for the heart."
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At Swim, Two Boys
Jamie O'Neill
Manufacturer: Scribner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Contemporary
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ASIN: 0743207149 |
Customer Reviews:
"The struggle for Irish Ireland...is for the heart.".......2005-05-18
The first seventy pages of this huge, eloquent, and multi-layered novel require the reader's patience--it is not always clear, at first, who the characters are or exactly what they are doing. But patience is gloriously rewarded as the cadences of the characters' speech, with its street slang, odd syntax, natural poetry, and homespun aphorisms, combine with vibrant details of their everyday lives and eventually bring these "ordinary" folks to life in Dublin in 1915.
On the eve of the Easter Rebellion, we meet Jim Mack and Doyler Doyle, two teenage boys who are trying to sort out who they are, emotionally, politically, and sexually. They get no help from home, where their fathers relive their memories of fighting for the British during the Boer War and where sex and the facts of life are never even hinted at. They get no help from their priests, who severely punish confessions of "the solitary sin," while sometimes fondling their students. Secret revolutionary societies troll for members, and priests sometimes help them. Neither boy has close friends his own age. As naïve Jim gravitates toward the more street-wise Doyler, their friendship blossoms, they rejoice in each other's company, and they begin to try on roles for the future--Doyler finding an outlet with Irish rebels, and Jim considering a priestly vocation.
It quickly becomes clear to the reader that this will be a gay coming-of-age story within the broader context of the Irish rebellion, and these two stories mesh seamlessly, with many obvious parallels. Quietly, without beating any drums or making any polemical statements, O'Neill allows his characters to discover their feelings for each other and their inborn nature, even as the political rebellion takes shape. O'Neill's characters are who they are, and he respects them and the reader too much to use them simply to prove a point. The parallels he draws between them and some of the famous leaders of the Irish rebellion, such as Roger Casement, and between them and the Sacred Band of Thebes are incidental to the story, though they do give a broader context to the gay relationship.
The only problem I had with this engrossing novel was with the character of MacMurrough, an older "mentor" to both boys. MacMurrough is a sexual predator, at least at the beginning, a man guilty of violent rape in a graphic early scene which made me cringe. The fact that he is later depicted sympathetically, and to some extent heroically, remains a problem for me, an anomaly in what is otherwise a beautifully wrought novel. Mary Whipple
Average customer rating:
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At Swim, Two Boys
Jamie O'Neill
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000PULA3Q |
Average customer rating:
- "The struggle for Irish Ireland...is for the heart."
|
At Swim, Two Boys
Jamie O'Neill
Manufacturer: Tandem Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: School & Library Binding
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ASIN: 0613925246 |
Customer Reviews:
"The struggle for Irish Ireland...is for the heart.".......2005-09-21
The first seventy pages of this huge, eloquent, and multi-layered novel require the reader's patience--it is not always clear, at first, who the characters are or exactly what they are doing. But patience is gloriously rewarded as the cadences of the characters' speech, with its street slang, odd syntax, natural poetry, and homespun aphorisms, combine with vibrant details of their everyday lives and eventually bring these "ordinary" folks to life in Dublin in 1915.
On the eve of the Easter Rebellion, we meet Jim Mack and Doyler Doyle, two teenage boys who are trying to sort out who they are, emotionally, politically, and sexually. They get no help from home, where their fathers relive their memories of fighting for the British during the Boer War and where sex and the facts of life are never even hinted at. They get no help from their priests, who severely punish confessions of "the solitary sin," while sometimes fondling their students. Secret revolutionary societies troll for members, and priests sometimes help them. Neither boy has close friends his own age. As naïve Jim gravitates toward the more street-wise Doyler, their friendship blossoms, they rejoice in each other's company, and they begin to try on roles for the future--Doyler finding an outlet with Irish rebels, and Jim considering a priestly vocation.
It quickly becomes clear to the reader that this will be a gay coming-of-age story within the broader context of the Irish rebellion, and these two stories mesh seamlessly, with many obvious parallels. Quietly, without beating any drums or making any polemical statements, O'Neill allows his characters to discover their feelings for each other and their inborn nature, even as the political rebellion takes shape. O'Neill's characters are who they are, and he respects them and the reader too much to use them simply to prove a point. The parallels he draws between them and some of the famous leaders of the Irish rebellion, such as Roger Casement, and between them and the Sacred Band of Thebes are incidental to the story, though they do give a broader context to the gay relationship.
The only problem I had with this engrossing novel was with the character of MacMurrough, an older "mentor" to both boys. MacMurrough is a sexual predator, at least at the beginning, a man guilty of violent rape in a graphic early scene which made me cringe. The fact that he is later depicted sympathetically, and to some extent heroically, remains a problem for me, an anomaly in what is otherwise a beautifully wrought novel. Mary Whipple
Average customer rating:
- "The struggle for Irish Ireland...is for the heart."
|
At Swim Two Boys
Jamie O'Neill
Manufacturer: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0715627600 |
Customer Reviews:
"The struggle for Irish Ireland...is for the heart.".......2005-09-23
The first seventy pages of this huge, eloquent, and multi-layered novel require the reader's patience--it is not always clear, at first, who the characters are or exactly what they are doing. But patience is gloriously rewarded as the cadences of the characters' speech, with its street slang, odd syntax, natural poetry, and homespun aphorisms, combine with vibrant details of their everyday lives and eventually bring these "ordinary" folks to life in Dublin in 1915.
On the eve of the Easter Rebellion, we meet Jim Mack and Doyler Doyle, two teenage boys who are trying to sort out who they are, emotionally, politically, and sexually. They get no help from home, where their fathers relive their memories of fighting for the British during the Boer War and where sex and the facts of life are never even hinted at. They get no help from their priests, who severely punish confessions of "the solitary sin," while sometimes fondling their students. Secret revolutionary societies troll for members, and priests sometimes help them. Neither boy has close friends his own age. As naïve Jim gravitates toward the more street-wise Doyler, their friendship blossoms, they rejoice in each other's company, and they begin to try on roles for the future--Doyler finding an outlet with Irish rebels, and Jim considering a priestly vocation.
It quickly becomes clear to the reader that this will be a gay coming-of-age story within the broader context of the Irish rebellion, and these two stories mesh seamlessly, with many obvious parallels. Quietly, without beating any drums or making any polemical statements, O'Neill allows his characters to discover their feelings for each other and their inborn nature, even as the political rebellion takes shape. O'Neill's characters are who they are, and he respects them and the reader too much to use them simply to prove a point. The parallels he draws between them and some of the famous leaders of the Irish rebellion, such as Roger Casement, and between them and the Sacred Band of Thebes are incidental to the story, though they do give a broader context to the gay relationship.
The only problem I had with this engrossing novel was with the character of MacMurrough, an older "mentor" to both boys. MacMurrough is a sexual predator, at least at the beginning, a man guilty of violent rape in a graphic early scene which made me cringe. The fact that he is later depicted sympathetically, and to some extent heroically, remains a problem for me, an anomaly in what is otherwise a beautifully wrought novel. Mary Whipple
Book Description
Few industrial enterprises left a more enduring imprint on the American West than Miller & Lux, a vast meatpacking conglomerate started by two San Francisco butchers in 1858. Industrial Cowboys examines how Henry Miller and Charles Lux, two German immigrants, consolidated the West's most extensive land and water rights, swayed legislatures and courts, monopolized western beef markets, and imposed their corporate will on California's natural environment. Told with clarity and originality, this story uses one fascinating case study to illuminate the industrial development and environmental transformation of the American West during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The process by which two neighborhood butchers turned themselves into landed industrialists depended to an extraordinary degree on the acquisition, manipulation, and exploitation of natural resources. David Igler examines the broader impact that industrialism--as exemplified by Miller & Lux--had on landscapes and waterscapes, and on human as well as plant and animal life in the West. He also provides a rich discussion of the social relations engineered by Miller & Lux, from the dispossession of Californio rancheros to the ethnic segmentation of the firm's massive labor force. The book also covers such topics as land acquisition and reclamation, water politics, San Francisco's unique business environment, and the city's relation to its surrounding hinterlands. Above all, Igler highlights essential issues that resonate for us today: who holds the right and who has the power to engineer the landscape for market production?
Customer Reviews:
A path breaking work.......2007-06-08
This is a fine book that provides important new insights not only into the history of big cattle ranching in California, but also into our broader understanding of the settlement of the American West and the meaning of American industrialization. Igler's concept of the "industrial cowboy" who works, in essence, in a factory without walls in which the landscape of nature itself becomes part of the technological system should force all American historians to rethink their understanding of what constitutes an industrialization. Likewise, Igler's work adds to the growing body of evidence that one of the best ways of defining and thinking about the American West is a place where a relatively pristine environment interesected with an advanced industrial society.
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What Do We Need a Union For?: The TWUA in the South, 1945-1955 (Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies)
Timothy J. Minchin
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0807846252
Release Date: 1997-02-19 |
Book Description
The rise in standards of living throughout the U. S. in the wake of World War II brought significant changes to the lives of southern textile workers. Mill workers' wages rose, their purchasing power grew, and their economic expectations increased—with little help from the unions. Timothy Minchin argues that the reasons behind the failure of textile unions in the postwar South lie not in stereotypical assumptions of mill workers' passivity or anti-union hostility but in these large-scale social changes.
Minchin addresses the challenges faced by the TWUA—competition from nonunion mills that matched or exceeded union wages, charges of racism and radicalism within the union, and conflict between its northern and southern branches—and focuses especially on the devastating general strike of 1951.
Drawing extensively on oral histories and archival records, he presents a close look at southern textile communities within the context of the larger history of southern labor, linking events in the textile industry to the broader social and economic impact of World War II on American society.
Books:
- Awakenings (I Found My Heart in San Francisco, Book One)
- Backyard Ballistics: Build Potato Cannons, Paper Match Rockets, Cincinnati Fire Kites, Tennis Ball Mortars, and More Dynamite Devices
- Beer School: Bottling Success at the Brooklyn Brewery
- Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas
- Business Intelligence for the Enterprise
- Business Intelligence for the Enterprise
- Chicken Soup for the Mother & Daughter Soul: Stories to Warm the Heart and Honor the Relationship
- Code Check: A Field Guide to Building, Plumbing, Mechanical, and Electrical Codes
- Compendium of Tourism Statistics
- Coraline
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