Reviews
PRAISE FOR JOSEPH O'CONNOR "Joseph O'Connor has a great eye for the absurd in common things, a great ear for the comic in ordinary speech. His writing is terrific."--Roddy Doyle PRAISE FORTHE SALESMAN "Powerful . . . freewheeling and supple, switching between the comic, the candid, and the profane."--The New York Times Book Review "Gripping . . . O'Connor's dialogue is by turns bristling and bleak, tender and funny, and his characters are free of stereotypes."--The Wall Street Journal, PRAISE FOR JOSEPH O'CONNOR "Joseph O'Connor has a great eye for the absurd in common things, a great ear for the comic in ordinary speech. His writing is terrific."--Roddy Doyle PRAISE FOR THE SALESMAN "Powerful . . . freewheeling and supple, switching between the comic, the candid, and the profane."-- The New York Times Book Review "Gripping . . . O'Connor's dialogue is by turns bristling and bleak, tender and funny, and his characters are free of stereotypes."-- The Wall Street Journal, First published in the U.K. and shortlisted for Irish Novel of the Year, this brooding new historical fiction by novelist, playwright and critic O'Connor (Cowboys and Indians) chronicles the mayhem aboard Star of the Sea, a leaky old sailing ship crossing from Ireland to New York during the bitter winter of 1847, its steerage crammed to the bulkheads with diseased and starving refugees from the Irish potato famine. The novel takes the form of a personal account written by passenger G. Grantley Dixon, a New York Times reporter who intersperses his narrative with reportage and interviews as he describes the intrigue that unfolds during the 26-day journey. There's Pius Mulvey, "a sticklike limping man from Connemara" known to the passengers as "the monster" or "the ghost," who shuffles menacingly around the ship and is the subject of many a rumor. There's Earl David Merridith of Kingscourt, one of the few passengers in first class, who has evicted thousands of his tenants for nonpayment of rent, dooming them and their families to almost certain death by starvation. Also aboard is the young widow, Mary Duane, a nanny for the Kingscourt children who shares a history of intimacies with both Kingscourt and Mulvey. And there is, of course, Kingscourt's wife, with whom Dixon is having an ill-advised affair. One of these passengers is on a mission to commit murder, and another is the fated victim. Through flashbacks, the complicated narrative paints a vivid picture of the rigors of life in Ireland in the mid-19th century. The engrossing, well-structured tale will hold historical fiction fans rapt., ...O'Connor's most inventive novel: brave, comic, ambitious and still, at its core, uniquely contemporary., "A brave and artful novel...[T]his is "a good old thumping yarn", the sort of thing a reader can "sink his tusks into." But Star of the Sea is also an agonizing enquiry into the nature of abandonment and the difficulty of finding anyone who will truly care about the fate of others...Few modern writers have exposed with so much passion and skill the protective measures...that we wrap around ourselves.", ...O''Connor''s most inventive novel: brave, comic, ambitious and still, at its core, uniquely contemporary., Joseph O'Connor's impressive historical novel, Star of the Sea, examines the unsettled personal tragedies among a group of interrelated characters and their difficulties in disregarding the past. Lord Merridith and his family board the titular ship in 1847, bound for New York, leaving behind an Ireland devastated by famine and strife. The family's beautiful nanny, Mary Duane, is with them, having fled a life of poverty, prostitution, and extreme tragedy. Another passenger, American journalist Grantley Dixon, is lured to America by business and his thinly veiled affair with Lady Merridith. Mary Duane discovers that Pius Mulvey, her former fiancé and the brother of her deceased husband, is among the overcrowded group of disease-ridden steerage passengers. A renowned thief and murderer, Mulvey abandoned Duane, only to return and sabotage her life in Ireland. Despised by his countrymen, Mulvey has been ordered by a group of steerage thugs to assassinate the demonized Merridith or face his own death.Conflict is inevitable, but O'Connor is more interested in the complexity of history and relationships and how each makes reinvention and resolution impossible. O'Connor presents the story as a work of journalism written by Dixon, composed in the era's tabloid style, even including passages from the captain's register and crew interviews. These devices lend the work a sense of authenticity, reinforced by the author's intimate knowledge of the period and his evocative, realistic prose: "At night one sensed the ship as absurdly out of its element, a creaking, leaking, incompetent concoction of oak and pitch and nails and faith, bobbing on a wilderness of viciously black water which could explode at the slightest provocation." O'Connor conveys a sense of immediacy and dimension in his ambitious story, providing this uncertain voyage with an ultimate sense of direction. --Ross Doll, ...O''Connor''s most inventive novel: brave, comic, ambitious and still, at its core, uniquely contemporary. --Colum McCann,author of This Side of Brightness
