City of Bohane, by Kevin Barry

"Nostalgia, on the peninsula, was a many-hooked lure"

This is the second Kevin Barry book I have read this year. I read the first book — Night Boat to Tangiers — over the summer and thus did not review it. I remember liking it, but otherwise I remember very little about it. It was like a nice breeze on a hot day that comes and goes and is immediately forgotten.

City of Bohane tells the story of one year in Bohane on the west coast of Ireland. Though it is set in the year 2053, it’s by no means science fiction. The story is of the city itself and how it has fallen from good times into a murk of crime and gang warfare and general filth. It’s all back alleys and dark moods and drug dens and violence, but in an atmospheric sort of way that keeps the realism at a comfortable distance from the reader, and the writing is very Irish in its descriptions of hardship and struggle told with a black wit, a gallows humor.

A great set up. And Barry is a talented writer who can really set a scene. But mostly I just found myself pretty bored the entire time.

The story is told in a manner that assuages the usual pattern of rising action>climax>falling action which isn’t always a negative thing but in this case the book had no center and the story just slithered along and never really took hold, especially since the book was lacking in any truly interesting characters.

Plus, well, it was dense in kind of an unpleasant way. I don’t mind density in novels, but in this case you had to grind your way through pages and pages and there just wasn’t any payoff.

I can see why people like this book. But I think it’s a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. All flash but no meat. Barry can turn a phrase and create atmosphere so thick you have to wipe the fog from your glasses, but it’s just not enough. Not for me. I think the writing bamboozles the reader into thinking they have stumbled into great literature, when in reality the wizard is just a man behind a curtain.

If you are looking to get truly lost in a world but aren’t too worried about story, then this one is for you. Otherwise: skip it.

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Next up, and speaking of being bored: the third and final book in the Southern Reach trilogy. Here’s hoping it’s more like book one and nothing like book two.

Thanks for reading!