“What is the sound of an eighty-nine-year-old heart breaking? It might not be much more than silence, and certainly a small, slight sound.”
~ From On Canann’s Side by Sebastian Barry ~
Library Director’s Notebook
October, 2012
Lilly Bere is the 89 year old narrator of On Canaan’s Side by Sebastian Barry. Having lived through “the troubles”, before, during and after WW I in Ireland , the Great Depression, World War II and the Vietnam war, Lilly knows about heartbreak, hope, and the toughness needed to survive both.
As a young woman, Lilly falls in love with an Irish soldier just returned from fighting the Great War, who becomes a Black and Tan, and therefore considered by many Irish as a traitor. Her father is a chief superintendant of the Dublin police, whose own life is always in peril. After an aborted IRA ambush, with a contract on their heads, Lilly and her soldier- fiancé flee to America, hoping to start a new life, with new identities. But they soon discover that vengeance has a long arm and an even longer memory; and in an example of bitter irony, they learn that in trying to protect them, Lilly’s father has led their enemies to them.
To say the writing in this book is exceptional is truly an understatement. The writing is remarkable; the story plangent and powerful. As I read , I kept stopping ,even during dramatic scenes in the story, to note with great pleasure how exquisitely fresh the writing is. Curious, I flipped back to read something about the author and discovered that not only does Sebastian Barry write novels, he is also a poet.
Bingo.
On Canaan’s Side is told entirely through Lilly’s journals. Passing seamlessly between her current journals and the memories they evoke, the reader is drawn deeply into the secrets of her life, her joys and sorrows, her friendships and betrayals, her youth and old age. We discover through her memories what it means to love in times of great danger and what it means to keep loving even when the object of our love has changed irrevocably. We know , from the very beginning of the book, that Lilly has just received a blow so intense, she does not want to live. Yet we come to care about her so much that we hope earnestly the last page will not be the end for Lilly.
This is a relatively short novel, so short that it deserves to be read through, at least twice, to savor the power and the passion of it. The heart break of an eighty nine year old may be a quiet sound, but it resonates with the throb of every compassionate reader’s heart.
