Patrick O'Keeffe

I'm not much at writing book reviews, but I'd like to say a few words about this collection of four stories.

Growing up, my grandmother, and the rest of my mom's side, lived in a very small community in far northern Wisconsin, in and around the town of Washburn.

Reading these stories drew me back to the houses and farms and people of that area, where everyone knew everyone else's children, even us, the grandkids, the summer visitors. Everyone knew someone in the wars. Everyone went to church and everyone shared stories -- different from these, naturally, but not quite so much.

I read this book straight through, this evening, while it rained here in Chicago, and now, were I less responsible, I'd be on the road, 8 hours to go.… (meer)

3.5 The Lyons and the Dwyer families have been in and out of each other lives for a long time. Neighbors in rural country Limerick, their children are often thrown together, sometimes for good sometimes not. James Dwyer want nothing more than to get away, which he does first to Dublin and then to America. In America, he seldom calls home and wants nothing more than to forget everything that came before. This, he finds, is not so easy, and the novel goes back and forth from the past to the present.

Home often is not the place we left but the place we take with us. We take the past and our family without for better or worse. Memories are often unreliable, and secrets have a way of coming out at the least opportune times.

In elegant prose, and wonderful dialogue the author takes us into the heart of these two families, whose members were often more entwined than most members know. James will find himself keeper of a big secret which will lead him to question his view of his childhood memories and how he interpreted them.

This is a quiet introspective book, no great action happens, but it is a novel that has a subtle impact on the reader. Makes one think about their own memories and how maybe what we remember isn't the whole story.… (meer)

Profoundly lyrical and beautiful novel, but not necesary an easy read. The novel is told by Jimmy Dwyer, an Immigrant from Ireland, and it is variable in time and place and Jimmy's thoughts and memories shift their focus, interweaving the past and the present, as he constantly remembers, relives, and rediscovers his past through the refracting lens of time and changing relationships. It is a novel that is, at times tragic, and certainly melancholy in how history plays itself out and repeats itself, how Jimmy learns that the past is always with us, no matter how much one wishes to escape it. O'keefe's prose is breathtakingly beautiful. He captures Jimmy's voice perfectly and he is fully and complexly realized. The interleaving of time and place is expertly and subtly maintained and captured in the nuances of voice that define different places and relationships. This was an exquisite book that I will not soon forget.… (meer)