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Sign up todayOn Canaan’s Side
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Learn moreFrom the two-time Man Booker short–listed author of The Secret Scripture comes a magnificent new novel that is the story of the twentieth century in America.
Told in the first person, as a narrative of Lilly Bere’s life over seventeen days, On Canaan’s Side opens as Lilly mourns the loss of her grandson, Bill. Lilly revisits her past, going back to the moment she was forced to flee Ireland at the end of the First World War, and continues her tale in America, a world filled with both hope and danger.
At once epic and intimate, Lilly’s story unfolds as she tries to make sense of the sorrows and troubles of her life and of the people whose lives she has touched. Spanning nearly seven decades, from the Great Depression to World War II and the Vietnam War, it is the heartbreaking story of a woman whose capability to love is enormous and whose compassion, even for those who have wronged her, is astonishing.
Sebastian Barry, named Irish fiction laureate in 2018, is a playwright and author whose novels include A Long Long Way, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, as was The Secret Scripture, which was also a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and winner of the Costa Book of the Year Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and the Irish Novel of the Year. His plays have been produced in London, Dublin, Sydney, and New York.
Wanda McCaddon (a.k.a. Nadia May or Donada Peters) has narrated well over six hundred titles for major audiobook publishers, has earned numerous Earphones Awards, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine.
Reviews
“The novel reads less like journal entries than like a monologue told in the melodic accent of Lilly’s youth…The beauty of this novel is that for all its murders and scents of Irish heather, it is not overwritten.”
“A marvel of empathy and tact.”
“On Canaan’s Side is written with vast sympathy and tenderness. Sebastian Barry’s handling of voice and cadence is masterly. His fictional universe is filled with life, quiet truth, and exquisite intimacy; it is also fully alert to the power and irony of history. In evoking Lilly Bere, he has created a most memorable character.”
“Barry, the greatest prose writer in Irish letters—which by definition makes him the greatest writer of prose in the English language—has fashioned a body of work consisting of five novels, a compact volume of plays, and three slim volumes of poetry that is unique in Irish, British, or American literature. Practically all Barry’s characters are related by blood or marriage…On Canaan’s Side fits seamlessly into Barry’s unique and expanding vision, seeking to restore with language that which has been taken away by time.”
“Barry’s skills are evident as he tenderly unspools Lilly’s story, with a fine eye for intimate moments.”
“I wanted to slow down to savor Wanda McCaddon’s exquisite reading of Sebastian Barry’s wonderful new novel, but I simply couldn’t stop…McCaddon narrating, Barry writing—you couldn’t ask for better. Winner of the Audiofile Earphones Award.”
“Masterful…Sustains a page-turning momentum, leaving the reader in suspense until the very end…A novel to be savored.”
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