Annie Dunne

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She drowns in her isolation and no one notices, because she fronts herself with anger or disinterest, or silence.

When Annie's nephew and his wife are set to go to London to find work, their two small children, a little boy and his older sister, are brought down to spend the summer with their grand-aunt. I don't like his small stature and the set of clothes on him that might give pause to a tinker before he put them on…But it is the air of the man, the confidence grounded on so little evidence for confidence…” that offends Annie the most.Her knowledge of the food industry and in particular the world of chocolate allowed her to mentor me in areas that I was previously unsure about.

The world of childish innocence also proves sometimes darkened and puzzling to her, and she struggles to find clear ground, clear light - to preserve her sense of love and place against these subtle forces of disquiet. Annie’s memories are filled with the memories of her young days, when there was more regard for the ways of others, a sense of permanence that seems to have disappeared, and a grander way of life. Annie and Sarah, who consider themselves elderly (after all, Annie is 59 and her cousin three years older!She is fraught with misery to think that her good friend who has given her a home with equal rights (as well as plenty of shared hard work on the small farm) is on the brink of marriage whereby Annie will have nowhere to go. Her laugh is thick and chesty, like blackberries beginning to bubble in the big pot, when we are making preserves in the autumn.

Both become more self-aware as the story progresses, and the reader sees the softer side of these very human women.Even this existence is threatened, for she finds out that Sarah has agreed to marry Billy Kerr, a nefarious, untrustworthy and unkempt odd job man who sometimes helps them with maintenance work, and who Annie believes only wants to marry her cousin to inherit the farm. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods.

This is the third novel I’ve read by Sebastian Barry (the others were The Secret Scripture and A Long Long Way) and he’s yet to disappoint. In the novel, Lillie remembers Annie as being often cross, rarely smiling and having a very sharp tongue.The latest novel from Barry (The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty) is a lyrical but ironic period story. But Hudson's dedication to the absurd runs surprisingly deep, and this may be appropriate for his subject.