On Canaan’s Side

On Canaan’s Side (2011) by Sebastian Barry

Reviewed by Janice Riley

As On Canaan’s Side, Sebastian Barry’s fifth novel, opens, we find Irish immigrant, Lily Bere, 89, sitting at the kitchen table of her cottage in the Hamptons. She has undertaken the writing of a journal following the death of her grandson. As we look over her shoulder we read the first entry, entitled, “First Day Without Bill”. As the revelations of the years unfold, her journal becomes a journey we undertake with her, and in Barry’s luminous prose her history becomes incantation.

“What is the sound of an eighty-nine-year-old heart breaking?” her story begins, “It might not be much more than silence, and certainly a small slight sound.”

America has long been considered the promised land, and here those “glittering shores” offer themselves to our heroine as a haven that proves both false and true. Born in Sligo in the 1920’s, Lily flees Ireland at 16 when her fiancé is targeted for political execution. She eventually makes her way to New York and into the employ, and benevolent sponsorship, of a wealthy Irish matriarch for whom she cooks. It is a beautiful story, lovingly told, of seeing life through its joys and sorrows with the enduring power of a woman’s love.

Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955 and is a celebrated author and playwright, often exploring the themes of family, loss, nationality, and war in his writing. His three recent novels have been short or long-listed for the prestigious Man Booker Prize. His genre is literary fiction: serious, stylistic, and deeply character-driven. He is a gifted wordsmith and a master storyteller.

Those who have yet to discover him may find, as this reader has, that there are few equals in the world of contemporary literature. There is often that surprising, radiant turn of phrase one finds in Dylan Thomas, capturing the essence of something as no one has before. It is a rare gift. By journey’s end, we are moved to silence, yet, there is a small sound, like awe, as we close the book and there is nothing slight about it.