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"Poignant....powerful."—New York Times
One Irish family's fight for survival makes for an unforgettable tale of love, abandonment, hunger, and redemption.
At just sixteen, Nancy Martin leaves the small island of Cape Clear for the mainland, the only member of her family to survive the effects of the Great Famine. Finding work in a grand house on the edge of Cork City, she is irrepressibly drawn to the charismatic gardener Michael Egan, sparking a love affair and a devastating chain of events that continues to unfold over three generations.
Spanning more than a century, Billy O'Callaghan's weaves together the journey of an Irish family determined against all odds to be free. In 1920, Nancy's son Jer has lived through battles of his own as a soldier in the Great War. Now drunk in a jail cell, he struggles to piece together where he has come from, and who he wants to be. And in the early 1980s, Jer's youngest child Nellie is nearing the end of her life in a council house just steps away from her childhood home; remembering the night when she and her family stole back something that was rightfully theirs, she imagines what lies ahead for those who will survive her.
This moving portrait of life in Ireland is set in the village where O'Callaghan's family has lived for generations, and is partly based on stories told by his parents and grandparents. His writing is imbued with lived experience and hard-earned truths, creating a novel so rich in life and empathy it is impossible to let go of his characters. An ambitious and lyrical family saga, this novel confirms Billy O'Callaghan as one of the finest living Irish writers.
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(4.5)
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Billy O'Callaghan paints a stark but realistic picture of Ireland through the ages, an Ireland to this day that is still coming to terms with its dark and secret past. An Ireland where woman were treated so badly by church and state. I love how the author weaves his family story, the setting and characters drew me in immediately and I really found this a unique and atmospheric read.
Life Sentences tells the story of a family through a century of hardship, starting just shortly after the famine. We are introduced to sixteen year old Nancy the sole survivor of her family after the famine and who leaves her home on the Island of Cape Clear and finds work in a grand house on the edge of Cork City. Life isn't kind to Nancy and her story is heart-breaking but courageous and I had a hard time parting with Nancy and her story.
This isn't an uplifting book but the prose is beautiful and the author lifts the reader with his words. It's an honest look at a time in Ireland when life was about survival and woman were second class citizens. There is much unsaid in the book and areas where I wanted the author to elaborate, give me more detail and yet on finishing the story I was satisfied with his telling of it and its been on my mind in a good way for the past few days. I could honestly feel the Billy O' Callaghan's heart and soul in this story and I am already looking forward to his next novel.
A beautiful book, haunting and memorable and another novel to place on my real life book shelf. (