Safe Return Doubtful

Barry gets better as he ages, so much so that here, almost every sentence is a work of art. Great books invite the reader to take a quote, like a photo, something to marvel at and remember the book by for years to come, in this, every paragraph bears such a phrase.

Barry writes short, striking sentences penetrating and indelible in their ferocity. There’s a mix of humour and tragedy in his three novels to date, and that is very much evident in this, his fourth.

This is set in America’s 19th-century Wild West, and concerns Tom Rourke, an Irish expat, who has settled in the mining town of Butte, Montana. He fancies himself as a balladeer, though he writes love letters for unmarried men to potential brides to help pay the rent. Complications arise when he meets, and takes to, Polly, recently betrothed to the mine’s owner.

Under the influence of love they flee on horseback, along with the contents of the boarding-house safe, heading to San Francisco, where everything will be better.

There will be many such summaries as mine above, and talk of the novel being a romance, or a travelogue, but those things find it difficult to describe the huge amount of fun and entertainment reaped in reading this wonderful novel.

Life is clearly hard in America in 1891, but Barry describes it with an impish joviality – an assault to the reader’s mind of language and imagery that will long remain in the memory.

A couple of clip’s…
of the Reverend..

He smiled broadly. He was covered in the small bites as will afflict a ginger-completed man in the out country. His was a pale skin mottled and pecked-looking. His eyes were glossy on a haul of hard-won Jesus-love. His hair was truly a one-off. The burial mound was at careful length alluded to and shyly questioned by his visitors. The Reverend sighed and nodded, and there was a great sadness evident. He had just the evening previous buried his one true friend of the mortal plane, he confided.

and of a boy Rourke and Polly encounter..

They dismounted outside the Perpetual Hotel. They took down the pack. A pale white-haired boy maybe with a touch of albino or Swede to him stepped out from the hotel and took the measure of them. He was about fourteen years old and solemn with the trials of it. He considered his boots at some length and nodded slowly as though he was coming to terms with the situation.

My GoodReads score 5 / 5