A Long Long Way: A Novel Horror Book Review

  Praised as a “master storyteller” (The Wall Street Journal) and hailed for his “flawless use   of language” (Boston Herald), Irish author and playwright Sebastian Barry has created a   powerful new novel about divided loyalties and the realities of war. In 1914, Willie Dunne, barely   eighteen years old, leaves behind Dublin, his family, and the girl he plans to marry in order to   enlist in the Allied forces and face the Germans on the Western Front. Once there, he encounters   a horror of violence and gore he could not have imagined and sustains his spirit with only the   words on the pages from home and the camaraderie of the mud-covered Irish boys who fight and   die by his side.  Dimly aware of the political tensions that have grown in Ireland in his absence,  Willie returns on leave to find a world split and ravaged by forces closer to home. Despite the   comfort he finds with his family, he knows he must rejoin his regiment and fight until the end. With   grace and power, Sebastian Barry vividly renders Willie’s personal struggle as well as the   overwhelming consequences of war.