by Jamie O'Neill
In 1915 Jim Mack works in his father's shop, takes teasing from his older brother in stride and weathers the remarks of the other, wealthy, boys at his Catholic school. Life is fixed. One of the brothers insists he may have a vocation, his father has his own plans for him, and Jim is content to let ...
Rating: 5.5/5 (It was that brilliant!)Summary: At its core, this is a love story. Two 16 year old boys, a college boy, Jim Mack and a laborer, Doyler Doyle, make a pact to practice swimming for a year so on Easter of 1916 (unknowingly to them a time of the Easter Rising and Irish rebellion), they wi...
Harrowing and heartbreaking. I'll probably gush about this book in the future, and eventually upgrade it to my favourites shelf. But I still don't believe I can reasonably give it more than 4 stars. I was so focused on the main characters, the main plotline, that I probably didn't pay as much attent...
Normalmente , prefiero no leer historias trágicas , es decir , libros de este estilo que te dejan un sabor amargo cuando lo terminás ... pero At Swim , two Boys , lo empecé (con reservas) y no pude dejarlo hasta el final . Excelente. Casi .“Listen to me. When you’d touch me, I won’t be jumping, I wo...
I'm pretty sure most people need to read this book.
This is one of those books that builds slowly but gets better and better as you keep reading. There's true depth here and complex characters that really get under your skin. Very lyrical writing but no sugarcoating of anything; lots or heartbreaking moments. The end, especially the last paragraph...
It's been decades since I have felt so clearly that English is not my first language as in the first 100 or so pages of this book. Then I decided to give up on trying to decipher every word of every sentence and just go with the flow. Either the writing got easier or the meaning became clearer, but ...
i always feel a little bad for the books that come after amazing reads. am i comparing them? should i be comparing them? this book got better as it went along, is that because i was still on such a high from my last read that my expectations were too big at the start of this one? i don't know.wh...
This was a large, long novel set in Ireland before the revolution from England. There is a rich cad and a poor shop keeper’s son who meet and try to develop a long real lasting relationship. The language that the author chose made it hard to read the book but it was well worth the effort. As the cad...
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