Days Without End

After two attempts to read through Sebastian Barry’s Days Without End, I declare defeat—no more! To my modest pile of Did Not Finish it goes.

So what’s wrong with this novel? The prose is undeniably beautiful, and it has won multiple well-respected awards (sorry, GR Readers’ Choice Award, you’re not one of them). Maybe it’s just me who fails to grasp its genius.

Thomas is an uneducated boy from Ireland, and his poor grammar and slang reflects that. Yet at the same time, Barry can’t help himself—he constantly lets his protagonist break out into poetry spanning multiple paragraphs. The dichotomy is just too much.

The carnage and original sin of the not-so-United States of America are vividly depicted, pulling no punches. Yet not even halfway through, I found myself tired of it. The narrative doesn’t reflect on these events with any tact or meaning; it’s just a repetitive collection of scenes, delivered by a history teacher who lacks passion but has plenty of fascination for cruelty.

Somehow, the characters in this tale remain bland and lack depth. This is quite remarkable, considering we’re dealing with a cross-dressing, gender-bending main character in the 1850s who is madly in love (or so he says) with his friend. The latter might as well be a ghost, given the absence of any meaningful characterization. The two lovebirds, accepted by their progressive peers without much fuss, somehow and miraculously find themselves at the center of almost every monumental event that shaped the USA and its identity.

And then, halfway through, I realized—I don’t care to see this through to the last chapter. The Days might have no end but my patience sure does.

This is not my book. No rating.