On Canaan’s Side Pdf Summary
Narrated by Lilly Bere, ‘On Canaan’s Side’ opens as she mourns the loss of her grandson, Bill. The story then goes back to the moment she was forced to flee Sligo, at the end of the First World War, and follows her life through into the new world of America, a world filled with hope and danger.
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On Canaan’s Side Review
TOP 500 REVIEWER
5.0 out of 5 stars When the sins of the Old World follow us to the New.
Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2011
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Sebastian Barry’s novel, “On Canaan’s Side” is a beautifully written story about how love and loss follow us all through life. Changing location, setting sail and fleeing from the troubles on one shore, does not always resolve those problems. While, on the other hand, even if we have to leave a place where we have loved ones, we don’t leave those bonds of love behind.
Lilly Bere looks back on her long life in the early 1990’s when she receives word of her beloved grandson’s suicide after returning home from the first Gulf War. Lilly, an immigrant from Ireland in the early 1920’s who fled to the US with her fiance because of threats to him from members of the IRA. However, tragedy in the form of a political assassination follows Lilly and Tadg to Chicago when Tadg is gunned down in public. Lilly flees to Cleveland, where she goes into domestic service and meets the man who becomes her husband and who fathers a son with her. Her son, Ed, is born to the newly-single Lilly after her husband is reported missing and presumed dead in an accident. The rest of Lilly’s life is devoted to raising her son by continuing in domestic service in the employ of a Kennedy-like family. Ed sees duty in the Vietnam War, and contributes another generation to Lilly’s line with his son, who he turns over to Lilly to raise. It is this grandson’s – Bill’s – death who Lilly is mourning when the book opens.
Lilly Bere has lost much in her 89 years of life. Her mother died at Lilly’s birth, and her beloved older brother, Willie, died in the fields of Picardy in WW1. Her father, a Dublin policeman, sends Tadg and her off to supposed safely in the United States, but, of course, Lilly loses Tadg. Sebastian Barry writes with great tenderness and tact about how the ties that bind us with one another are expandable and can remain with us even after our loved one’s earthly presence has gone. “Canaan” is a relatively short book, but the wisdom contained in its pages is astounding. An excellent novel.
4.0 out of 5 stars A good read
Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2013
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This is another excellent novel by Seastian Barry. He has used the same device as in The Secretic Scripture and has written it from the main characters point of view, a woman. The story starts with Lily writing about her life after the tragic suicide of her beloved grandson,Bill. Lily recounts her young life in Ireland after her mother died in childbirth. Her brother was killed in WW1 and there seems to be a pall over the family. When Lily becomes a friend if Tadg she is mixed up in the hatred of the Black and Tans of which Tadg is a member. A price is put on their heads and they flee by ship to the United States. They are not able to avoiud the IRA though and Tadg is murdered. Lily is helped then by a succession of people the first being Cassie, a black maid who takes her under her wing and gets her a job. She marries then but is unaware that her husband is a black man, he has light skin and is always trying to clean the colour from his face. He leaves Lilly while she is expecting their child and Lilly fdoes not find out till much later when she meets him in the street with his new family of these curious circumstances. Lilly is helped along the way by many people, including Mrs Wolohan and Mr Nolan. Lilly’s son Ed never knows of his fathers heritage and that is a failing on Lilly’s part as it may helped her troubled son. Her grandson though is the love of her life and she is devastated when he commits suicide. It appears he like his father is greatly affected by war. There is a twist at the end as in the Secret Scripture but I won’t spoil that for you. Overall a very entertaining novel whch brought up a lot of discussion points in our Book Club. Thwe writing and descriptions are excellent and it is a very good read.
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read!Took me a while to accomodate to Lilly’s voice
Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2011
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No one yet has mentioned that the 89 year old woman narrating this story has a unique and even youthful voice, to which it takes time to acclimate.
As for the sadness, it’s often just the other way around, a glowing gladness. I was in a wonderful mood when I hit the images beginning and after pp 113. This is what’s written on the first part of p 119:
“We poised, three beating hearts, three souls with all their stories so far in the course of their ordinary lives, three mere pilgrims, brilliantly unknown, brilliantly anonymoous, above a Cleveland fun park, with the wonderful catastrophe of the sunlight on the river, the capricious engineering of the tracks, the sudden happiness of knowing Joe, his clever kindness to Cassie, his shoal of looks at me, I could see him, I could see him, glancing at my face, my body, wondering, wondering, his own eyes lit not only by the strange weather of that day, but something as strange within, Joe’s gathered stare, like a photogragh of some old poetman, that you would see in a magazine, all balanced in for a perfect moment, the past somehow mollified, the journey so far somehow justified, Tadg’s murder, my own faraway condition, fatherless and sisterless, all poised in the gentle under-singing of the wind, coming up through the filigree of the fun car, raised to heaven, almost to heaven….”
The language I hope to capture in the section is stream of consciouness but in each chapter, the language is unique. I came to love this book only at about this jucture and then all the way through. It is not a sad book only but as someone else said, Lilly’s is a lyrical life, a lyrical tale.
Deep inside her story we are never far from the violence that was woven into American life.
Five stars for originality and greatness.
About Sebastian Barry Author Of On Canaan’s Side pdf Book
Sebastian Barry Author Of On Canaan’s Side pdf Book is an Irish playwright, novelist and poet. He is noted for his dense literary writing style and is considered one of Ireland’s finest writers
Barry’s literary career began in poetry before he began writing plays and novels. In recent years his fiction writing has surpassed his work in the theatre in terms of success, having once been considered a playwright who wrote occasional novels.
He has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his novels A Long Long Way (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), the latter of which won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His 2011 novel On Canaan’s Side was long-listed for the Booker. He won the Costa Book of the Year again – in 2017 for Days Without End.
On Canaan’s Side pdf, Paperback, Hardcover Book Information
- Publisher : Faber & Faber; American First edition (August 4, 2011)
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 0571226531
- ISBN-13 : 978-0571226535
- Item Weight : 1.07 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.34 x 0.98 x 9.45 inches
- Customer Reviews: 4.4 out of 5 stars 369 ratings
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