The Temporary Gentleman
Sebastian Barry, 2014
Viking Adult
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143127123
Summary
A stunning new novel from the two-time Man Booker shortlisted author of The Secret Scripture.
In this highly anticipated new novel, Irishman Jack McNulty is a “temporary gentleman”—an Irishman whose commission in the British army in World War II was never permanent. Sitting in his lodgings in Accra, Ghana, in 1957, he’s writing the story of his life with desperate urgency. He cannot take one step further without examining all the extraordinary events that he has seen.
A lifetime of war and world travel—as a soldier in World War II, an engineer, a UN observer—has brought him to this point. But the memory that weighs heaviest on his heart is that of the beautiful Mai Kirwan, and their tempestuous, heartbreaking marriage. Mai was once the great beauty of Sligo, a magnetic yet unstable woman who, after sharing a life with Jack, gradually slipped from his grasp.
Award-winning author Sebastian Barry’s The Temporary Gentleman is the sixth book in his cycle of separate yet interconnected plays and novels, which brilliantly reimagine characters from Barry’s own family. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 5, 1955
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—Catholic University School and Trinity College
• Awards—Costa Book of the Year; James Tait Black Memorial Prize;
Cezam Prix Litteraire Inter CE (France); Walter Scott Prize
• Currently—lives in Wicklow, Ireland
Sebastian Barry, an Irish playwright, novelist and poet is considered one of his country's finest writers, noted for his dense literary writing style. Born in Dublin, his mother was the late Irish actress Joan O'Hara. He attended Catholic University School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he read English and Latin.
Barry's literary career began in poetry before he began writing plays and novels. In recent years his fiction writing has surpassed his work in the theatre in terms of success, having once been considered a playwright who wrote occasional novels.
He has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for his novels A Long Long Way (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), the latter of which won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His 2011 novel On Canaan's Side (2011) was longlisted for the Booker, and his most recent novel was published in 2014, The Temporary Gentleman.
Novels and plays
Barry started his literary career with the novel Macker's Garden in 1982. This was followed by several books of poetry and a further novel The Engine of Owl-Light in 1987 before his career as a playwright began with his first play produced in 1988 at the Abbey theatre, Boss Grady's Boys.
Barry's maternal great-grandfather, James Dunne, provided the inspiration for the main character in his most internationally known play, The Steward of Christendom (1995). The main character, named Thomas Dunne in the play, was the chief superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police from 1913–1922. He oversaw the area surrounding Dublin Castle until the Irish Free State takeover on 16 January 1922. One of his grandfathers belonged to the British Army Corps of Royal Engineers.
Both the play The Steward of Christendom (1995) and the novel The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998) are about the dislocations (physical and otherwise) of loyalist Irish people during the political upheavals of the early 20th century. The title character of the latter work is a young man forced to leave Ireland by his former friends in the aftermath of the Anglo-Irish War.
He also wrote the satirical Hinterland (2002), based loosely on former Irish Taoiseach Charles Haughey, the performance of which caused a minor controversy in Dublin. The Sunday Times, called it "feeble, puerile, trite, shallow, exploitative and gratuitously offensive", while The Telegraph called it “as exciting as a lukewarm Spud-U-Like covered in rancid marge and greasy baked beans.”
Barry's work in fiction came to the fore during the 1990s. His novel A Long Long Way (2005) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and was selected for Dublin's 2007 One city one book event. The novel tells the story of Willie Dunne, a young recruit to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during the First World War. It brings to life the divided loyalties that many Irish soldiers felt at the time following the Easter Rising in 1916. (Willie Dunne, son of the fictional Thomas Dunne, first appears as a minor but important character in his 1995 play The Steward of Christendom.)
His novel The Secret Scripture (2008) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction (the oldest such award in the UK), the Costa Book of the Year; the French translation Le testament cache won the 2010 Cezam Prix Litteraire Inter CE. It was also a favourite to win the 2008 Man Booker Prize, narrowly losing out to Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.
Barry's most recent play is Andersen's English (2010), inspired by children's writer Hans Christian Andersen coming to stay with Charles Dickens and his family in the Kent marshes.
On Canaan's Side (2011), Barry's fifth novel, concerns Lily Bere, the sister of the character Willy Dunne from (the 2005 novel) A Long Long Way and the daughter of the character Thomas Dunne from (the 1995 play) The Steward of Christendom, who emigrates to the US. The novel was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the 2012 Walter Scott Prize.
His most recent novel, The Temporary Gentleman (2014), tells the story of Jack McNulty—an Irishman whose commission in the British army in WWII was never permanent. Sitting in his lodgings in Accra, Ghana, in 1957, he’s writing the story of his life with desperate urgency.
Academia
Barry's academic posts have included Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa (1984), Villanova University (2006) and Writer Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin (1995–1996).
Personal
Barry lives in County Wicklow with his wife, actress Alison Deegan, and their three children. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retreived 5/8/2014.)
Book Reviews
[A] lyrical but ironic period story. Jack McNulty...is living in self-imposed exile in Ghana, recalling his days as a soldier and civil servant, and as a suitor, lover, and husband to the haunting and haunted Mai Kirwan.... Barry again proves himself a prose artist and a skilled navigator of the rocky shoals of modern morality and Irish heritage.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Expanding on characters and events in his preceding novels, Barry tells the story of Jack McNulty, a "temporary gentleman" because his commission in the British Army during World War II wasn't made permanent.... [A] bold lyricism, unforgettable characters, and epic historicism. —John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
Library Journal
Barry’s prose has a dreamlike quality....The raw elegance of his storytelling has its own beauty.
Booklist
Pensive, quietly lyrical.... [T]he strongest part of Barry’s tale is in its visitation of the past, when McNulty falls deeply in love with Mai Kirwan, the rose of Sligo. There, Barry falls into Joycean reveries.... Grim, even cautionary, from first to last. But, for all that, a beautifully written story of a love lost, and inevitably so.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1.The Temporary Gentleman opens just before Jack is plunged into the sea. How does this scene set the stage for the rest of the novel?
2. Jack is considered a “temporary gentleman” because of his status as an Irishman with a temporary officer’s commission in the British army. Does your understanding of the phrase change over the course of the book?
3. If Mai adored her father as much as Jack believed, why did she ignore his pleas to end her relationship with Jack? What does Mai’s obsession with the cinema tell you about her character?
4. After Mai and Jack have their first child, Mai’s brother—also named Jack—signs Grattan House over to them. Could Jack McNulty have maintained the family home if he hadn’t been a gambler and a drinker?
5. Is it really possible that Jack could live with Mai and not realize she had begun to drink?
6. Discuss the way in which Jack’s red hair is used as a symbol for his relationship with Mai.
7. Jack’s parents provided a loving and supportive home for their children. Yet, each of their sons encounters mostly tragedy and heartbreak. Was their generation somehow damned by the era in which they lived?
8. One night on the battlefield, Jack McNulty meets the other Jack McNulty—his distant cousin from the Protestant branch of the McNultys. What is the significance of their encounter?
9. Why does Sebastian Barry make Tom Quaye the same age as Jack and give him the same name as Jack’s brother and an Irish accent?
10. Does Jack do all he can to protect Maggie and Ursula? Does he deserve their forgiveness?
11. After Mai’s death, Jack makes it his mission to solve the mystery of his mother’s parentage. And in Ghana, he works to reunite Tom Quaye with his estranged wife. Do these acts atone for the pain he inflicted on Mai?
12. Why does Jack plan to burn the memoir that he so painstakingly wrote?
13. Does Jack truly want to return to Ireland? Or does he invite his own death?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)