Library Director’s NotebookDecember, 2012  “Lions led by donkeys”.  This scathing, often quoted...

Thu, 11/29/2012 - 2:19pm -- KChin

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Library Director’s Notebook
December, 2012

 “Lions led by donkeys”.  This scathing, often quoted rebuke refers to the brave British ground troops, drawn from all parts of the vast British Empire, who died by the hundreds of thousands in Europe from 1914 to 1918, vainly trying to follow the absurd and arrogant commands of their generals.

 We are drawn to books and movies about World War I, such as All Quiet On The Western Front or Gallipoli because we cannot shake our incredulity and heartbreak about this war. How could it have happened; why did no one stop it; why was it allowed to wreak such havoc over the world and slaughter nearly an entire generation of young, idealist men, not to mention numberless civilian casualties of war?

 These questions are not answered in A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry.  Like all truly skilled writers, Barry does not set out to answer questions, or even to pointedly ask them.  Instead he brings us into the lives of Irish soldiers who have volunteered to help their traditional enemies, the English, with the war in Flanders; hoping that by serving the English cause in battle, the English will in turn keep their promise to give home rule to Ireland after the war. Yet, whenever “The Irish Question” was discussed in the nineteenth and early twentieth century by either English or Irish, there were a multitude of tough choices, none of which satisfied or appeased everyone.

  Willie Dunne is barely eighteen when he joins His Majesty’s forces to fight on the Western Front.  Like so many others, he enlists in a burst of idealism, certain that he can make a difference and help win the war in a few months or so.  The brutal reality and the grizzly inhumanity of war in the trenches all too quickly lead to Willie’s disillusionment.

 Willie might well be “every man”.  He is not brilliant, well connected, handsome, or well educated. He is warm, compassionate, fun loving, sincere, and above all, young.  Like so many young men, his fondest hopes are to earn the respect of his father, the love of his sweetheart, and a good, honest way to make a living—simple desires, for a simple man, in a bitter and war- torn world.

 A Long Long Way is written with sterling simplicity and astonishing beauty, both of which make for a short novel so absorbing, so tender, and so powerful that you are left shaken and heartbroken by the end.  Willie becomes real to the reader; not a fictional character, but a breathing person. His fate is a matter of the most immense importance.  This is not a light-hearted book, easily forgotten; it is a heartfelt book about a decent man, worth reading and worth remembering.

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