Annie Dunne

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Caught in the between times, when cars have just begun to be seen now and again, her life seems to be filled with more losses than gains, yet she remains content. There is a runaway horse, and hints of potential sexual abuse, but much of the novel is about Annie's interior life. Initially, the arrival of the two children, a six-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy, worried Annie.

Essentially, they are a metaphor for new beginnings, but can Annie let go of her troubled past to start afresh with two youngsters in her charge? Rooney's genius lies in her ability to track her characters' subtle shifts in power, both within themselves and in relation to each other, and the ways they do and don't know each other; they both feel most like themselves when they're together, but they still have disastrous failures of communication. Egolf won praise for his first novel, ''Lord of the Barnyard,'' and he has a gift for down-and-out imagery. I do love books where nothing seems to be happening and yet so much does (rather like with Jennifer Johnston who you kindly introduced me to) so if I can find this at the library I will have to give it a whirl.And that’s all we can say about it, the shortness, the swiftness, and the strange unimportance of life. Hopefully heaven itself will consist of this, the broadening cheer of light as I walk out into the morning yard. For reasons I can't explain, and despite a character with an Irish anger I recognize from relatives (and admittedly sometimes myself), the story didn't grab me.

Then Rooney elaborates: "She tries to pronounce this in a way that communicates several things: apology, painful embarrassment, some additional pained embarrassment that serves to ironise and dilute the painful kind, a sense that she knows she will be forgiven or is already, a desire not to 'make a big deal. And it is that dichotomy between what Annie feels inside and the way her actions are interpreted by others which provides the tension — and the heart-breaking emotion — that makes this novel a truly special one. I carry the bed heat on the surface of my skin and the soft breeze of the night shows a great interest in me, raising the hairs on my arms. Irish playwright and novelist Barry's gift for image and metaphor ( The Whereabouts of Aneas McNulty) are equaled here by his eye for descriptive detail. Before living with Sarah, Annie lived with her sister, Maud, her brother-in-law, Matt, and their three boys, including one named Trevor.Rooney precisely articulates everything that's going on below the surface; there's humor and insight here as well as the pleasure of getting to know two prickly, complicated people as they try to figure out who they are and who they want to become. It’s essentially the inner monologue of a spinster, the 59-year-old Annie Dunne of the title, who shares a house with her slightly older cousin, Sarah Cullen, and spends one summer looking after her nephew’s two young children. Annie’s sister Maud took ill and Annie went to help Maud’s husband Matt in raising their 3 sons and looking after their home.

They confound her, too; they play strange games that aren't altogether innocent, and their impulsiveness disrupts Annie and Sarah's spartan routine. The protagonist Annie, who was the central character in Barry`s play The Steward of Christendom [4] [5] is seen at first living with her sickly sister and caring for her brother-in-law.It is a time of change for rural life, and there are many indications that this peaceful existence will be ending soon. Against that happiness moves the figure of Billy Kerr, with his ambiguous attentions to Sarah, threatening to drive Annie from her last niche of safety in the world. Annie is the daughter of Thomas Dunne, the central character of The Steward of Christendom, but Barry approaches her in a manner which suggests the seam is becoming exhausted. The eponymous protagonist is an unmarried woman in her sixties who lives with her similarly solitary cousin Sarah in a Wicklow farmhouse. My crab-apple tree seems to watch over their coming, like a poor man forever waiting for alms with cap in hand.