Beatlebone, by Kevin Barry
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Beatlebone, by Kevin Barry
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A searing, surreal novel that blends fantasy and reality—and Beatles fandom—from one of literature’s most striking contemporary voices, author of the international sensation City of Bohane It is 1978, and John Lennon has escaped New York City to try to find the island off the west coast of Ireland he bought eleven years prior. Leaving behind domesticity, his approaching forties, his inability to create, and his memories of his parents, he sets off to calm his unquiet soul in the comfortable silence of isolation. But when he puts himself in the hands of a shape-shifting driver full of Irish charm and dark whimsy, what ensues can only be termed a magical mystery tour. Beatlebone is a tour de force of language and literary imagination that marries the most improbable elements to the most striking effect. It is a book that only Kevin Barry would attempt, let alone succeed in pulling off—a Hibernian high wire act of courage, nerve, and great beauty.
Beatlebone, by Kevin Barry - Amazon Sales Rank: #124978 in Books
- Published on: 2015-11-17
- Released on: 2015-11-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.80" h x 1.18" w x 5.22" l, .75 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 320 pages
Beatlebone, by Kevin Barry Review Praise for Beatlebone: A 2015 New York Times Notable Book Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2015 “Beatlebone is a novel that takes its reader to the edge—of the Western world, of sanity, of fame, of words. But it also takes us to the very edge of the novel form, where it meets its notorious doppelgänger, autobiography. Its compulsive narrative of one of the last century’s great musicians and pop icons gradually, and without a hint of contrivance, becomes a startling and original meditation on the uncanny relationship of a writer to his character. Intricately weaving and blurring fiction and life, Beatlebone embodies beautifully this prize’s spirit of creative risk. We’re proud to crown it our winner." —Josh Cohen, Chair of Judges, Goldsmiths Prize 2015 “Books like this come along once in a generation, books by writers with real chops, who haven’t yet been discouraged from taking real chances and blurring the lines between disciplines. Barry employs every tool in his formidable toolbox—razor-sharp prose, powerful poetics and a dramatist’s approach to dialogue unencumbered by punctuation.... And just when you think you’ve seen everything and that there’s nothing else the beast can unleash on his unsuspecting reader, he unveils a literary device this reader has never encountered before—a peek behind the curtain where the wizard wields the controls…. Well, you’ll have to read the book. And it works. It all hangs together perfectly to form the kind of next-level literature that inspires, even incites another generation of natural-born wordsmiths to write big and bold and put in the work it takes to become a beast. You see the trick of it? No fear.” —Steve Earle, The New York Times Book Review “Mr. Barry’s language is still poetic and reaching and imaginative, but now in effortless service to more substantial themes, in particular love and ‘the way that time moves.’ As the novel’s attention alternates between Mr. Barry’s real trip to the island and John’s made up one, the identities of the two men—both artists, both marked by the loss of their mothers—mingle, until their stories begin to overlap more and more exactly, and finally the two become indivisible, ghosts of each other across the decades. The effect is beautiful, reminiscent at different moments of Virginia Woolf and Geoff Dyer… Even as the journeys of the author and his protagonist merge, Mr. Barry and Lennon remain stubbornly distinct. But perhaps what ultimately makes this a great novel is its author’s exploration of the ways that sometimes, in art, we do get to become each other—kind of.” —Charles Finch, The New York Times “The story is intriguing, not least because it's rare to come upon a lesser-known narrative about the Beatles — and yet the unexpected turn of Barry's novel, which imagines a 1978 trip by Lennon to Dorinish, is that it isn't really about the singer at all…. Barry…is a genius of the language, teasing out impressionistic riffs that channel emotion into words.” —David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times “[E]xtraordinary… Kevin Barry’s Beatlebone is a strange, intense and slightly incoherent extended fantasy about two months that John Lennon spent in Ireland in 1978, fleeing an invasive press while searching for sanctuary on a remote island he had purchased on a whim. As unlikely as this premise seems, Barry is largely able to carry it off by force of imagination and by a super-charged prose style that borrows heavily from James Joyce, Flann O’Brien, J.P. Donleavy and other past masters of extravagant Irish lyricism at its high-modernist peak. —Michael Lindgren, The Washington Post “Beatlebone is glorious, savory stuff—part lark, part meditation, and a tiny part excavation.” —Laura Collins-Hughes, The Boston Globe “Barry has a wry, pitch-perfect ear for dialogue and an equally affecting eye for character traits.” —Liam Callanan, San Francisco Chronicle “Beatlebone, the novel, reads as brilliant liner notes for a nervous breakdown, a hip, alternative history for Lennon's lost years. We know John never made a sea-mammal inspired album. We are all too well aware that Mark David Chapman is waiting in the wings. We realize the ‘John Lennon’ in Barry's book is a confection, a creation, a sleight of hand. Yet somehow readers may feel they are getting close to the real flesh and blood human. There are places he remembered, and in his life, he loved them all. Perhaps an island in Clew Bay was one of them.” —Jean Zimmerman, NPR.org "There’s music to Barry’s prose: Smart rhythms dart through his sentences; taut bridges join his paragraphs; the tinge of hysteria serves to animate his characters and their surroundings. His dialogue is whimsical, sometimes hilarious, catching the idiom of the local life, and, in Beatlebone, nailing John Lennon, the wittiest and darkest Beatle, spot on." —Fred Kaplan, Slate "...[T]his glorious lark feels canonical." —Boris Kachka, New York Magazine, "7 Books You Need to Read This November" "Beatlebone is an odyssey of the mind. Its ever-shifting modes vividly recall James Joyce’s Ulysses.... The island simply represents an idea. What’s at stake in his getting to the island? We never really know, which is a tricky feat to pull off. Barry succeeds by parsing John’s limbo state so clearly and vividly." —Josh Cook, Minneapolis Star Tribune “Nearly every sentence exhibits the care and craft of a poet. Barry doesn’t waste a word.” —Gregg LaGambina , The A.V. Club “It’s a musical fever dream of a book that sounds weirder than it is; Barry’s perfectly honed storytelling voice sweeps readers happily through decades and across rough seas.” —Becky Ohlsen, BookPage “Barry’s prose is at once dreamy and direct, ethereal and grounded.” —Eric Swedlund, Paste Magazine.com"Beatlebone is a perfect novel for someone who loves good fiction, or who wants to dive into the human condition, or any Beatles fan."—Anders Carlson, The Kansas City Star"'The examined life turns out to be a pain in the stones,' Lennon says near the end of Beatlebone. But Barry’s keenly worded quest is worth the trip."—Heather Scott Partington, Las Vegas Weekly"[Beatlebone is] a gloriously freewheeling tale imagining an attempt by John Lennon to visit the island he had bought off the coast of Mayo in 1967... Barry weaves his own odyssey to “Beatle Island” into a tale of fame, freaks, bad liquor and bad weather, with Lennon—angry, brilliant, sarcastic, tender, on a doomed quest for artistic release and his Irish roots—at its centre." —Justine Jordan, The Guardian "Mingling surreal black humour and breakdown, Beatlebone is a wild cascade of language and imagery, rich in wordplay and referential resonance." —Lee Langley, The Spectator "Casually lyrical, formally inventive, funny and moving, [Beatlebone] is a small wonder." —Theo Tait, Sunday Times "Too often, novels about great artists shy away from attending to those very creative processes that made them great. Beatlebone is a committed, brutal portrait." —Tom Williams, Literary Review "A famous musician's 1978 pilgrimage to an island off the west coast of Ireland takes several detours, abetted by his memories and his minder, in this original, lyrical, genre-challenging work... Nothing at all like Barry's award-winning debut novel, this may be a risky follow-up, but it's intriguing at every turn, and Barry's prose can be as mesmerizing as some of his hero's songs." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review "Barry, a great poet of a novelist...has created an unusual novel, remarkable in structure as well as tone, that channels the contradictory nature of Lennon himself." —Booklist, starred review “[Reminds] us how writing merges memory and imagination to connect the living and the dead.” —Publishers Weekly
About the Author Kevin Barry is the author of the highly acclaimed novel City of Bohane and two short-story collections, Dark Lies the Island and There Are Little Kingdoms. He was awarded the Rooney Prize in 2007 and won the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award in 2012. For City of Bohane, he was short-listed for the Costa First Novel Award and the Irish Book Award, and won the Author’s Club Best First Novel Prize, the European Union Prize for Literature, and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere. He lives in County Sligo in Ireland.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful. BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN AND AFFECTING By David Keymer In 1967, Lennon had bought the small island of Dorinish, in Clew Bay, county Mayo. It was his off-again on-again retreat when the attention of media and fans got to him. In California in 1970, John and Yoko went through an extended session of primal Scream therapy with the controversial Arthur Janov. In 1970-72, John allowed “king of the hippies” Sid Rawle to establish a commune on Dorinish. And then in 1977, John Lennon announced that he was retiring from performing to spend time with his family and write. He did write–two books of whimsical, half-formed prose- but by 1980, John was back in the recording studio. It’s from these slim facts, and the sound perception that John was going through a prolonged drought music-wise, that the clever, word-rich Irish writer Kevin Barry has fashioned this whimsical fiction.Beatlebone is a very odd book. It’s like the mythical hippogriff, one kind of animal in the front and another behind, and of uncertain purpose, less a novel than a good-humored ramble through language and mood refracted through the word-rich and exuberant prose of a very talented writer with a gift for the blarney. The incident it chronicles may have occurred or may not: John’s decision to return to the island for a long, solitary session of Screaming. Some of the people in it are real people –John, a mention of Rawles—but more are not, including John’s driver, pub mate and talking foil, Cornelius O’Grady, than whom no character could be more Irish. There’s a lot of talking –a lot!, a lot of drifting around, of gorgeous (or striking) descriptions of the bleak and windy terrain of western Ireland and the ocean islands that adjoin it. A couple of times Barry breaks into Q and A format, other time he injects himself directly into the narrative. The fictional Lennon is an appealing character, riven with insecurity and filled with rage, blocked at the moment artistically but when one night he lets his hair down to sing and play Irish songs in a pub, he's still possessed of the voice and spirit of an angel. At points, it seems a terribly slow read and by the end of it nothing much happens but the reader is happy he’s made the trip.Near the end of the book, Barry interjects a paragraph about John’s prose. It could stand as John's epitaph in many ways. It "suggest[s] great potential but read[s] like first drafts … [I]t is funny and vivid and pacy, but it never slows or comes down through the gears sufficiently to allow moments of tenderness, sadness, love, anger, bitterness, or rancor, all the sweet and thorny emotions he routinely sprang in his brilliant and nerveless songwriting. "With John, a man created something lasting even against his own demons.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful. "Deathhauntedness, the seal says." By "switterbug" Betsey Van Horn Author Kevin Barry crossbreeds the myth/legend of John Lennon with the man he was, in this fable-like, surreal story of one Beatle’s odyssey. Lennon bought an island in Western Ireland almost a decade before, also known as Beatle Island. He’d only been once. Now, it’s 1978, and he’s in the midst of his dry years. He hasn’t produced new material since the 1974 Walls and Bridges; he’s busy baking bread and being a househusband, giving all his attention to Yoko and their toddler son, Sean. He’s even gone macrobiotic.Now, John wants a pilgrimage to his island, to spend three days in solitude and see if the artist juice flows, to find his mojo again. His experience in Primal Scream therapy has given him something to work with while out there. His driver, Cornelius O’Grady, is quite the eccentric character. He helps to ward off the press and navigate to the tiny island in Clew Bay, called Dorinish (pronounced Dornish), but the circumnavigation leads to surprising detours in this (no surprise) 9 chapter masterpiece. A magical mystery tour.If you’re expecting a Beatle-mania bio or story, then you may be disappointed. Barry’s prose has more than a touch of magical realism, and in 8 of the 9 chapters he comes at the story from a slanted angle. Yes, we are inside Lennon’s head, but the lexicon and dialect, as well as the astonishing prose, play with ambiguity, and create a hypnagogic atmosphere. I had to pay attention, and eventually, the dialogue and exposition construct a moving, painterly portrait of John Lennon, the man, as it captures the myth.Chapter six is kind of an alternate chapter, wherein Barry writes an essay-like account of his own personal odyssey to Dorinish. It acts as glue for the rest of the book, and serves to answer some of the questions that may be rolling around in the reader’s head. It is also, in its realism, what turns this book from a truly excellent book to a tour de force. While John Lennon appropriately remains at some distance--myth-like, Kevin Barry's essay is almost confessional, and it draws you into his heart.If you are not knowledgeable about John Lennon, it won’t keep you from enjoying this masterly work of literature. The upside of being ignorant of Lennon history is you won’t have expectations of it being a “Beatle” book. It may heighten the enjoyment, however, to know a few things. Lennon was born and raised in Liverpool, mostly by his Aunt Mimi, as his troubled mother, Julia (the song, “Julia,” is an homage to her), squandered her life and compelled the state to remove John from her. His father left them when John was very young. He carries an eternal melancholy regarding his youth, and the author frequently furnished the story with the musician’s unresolved pain about his past.Lennon has a certain feminine side to him--Yoko wore the pants, so to speak, and handled all his business affairs. He also had an obsession with numbers, particularly the number 9. John and Yoko lived at the tony Dakota apartments in NYC (where he was also shot and killed at age forty on December 8, 1980). It’s still sad to recall that his album, Double Fantasy, his first in five years, was released just a few short weeks before his murder.On this fabled journey, Cornelius is equally a main character. His shapeshifting nature is a fitting counterpoint to John’s distress. As Lennon wears his driver’s dead father’s silver-blue suit for much of the time, the narrative dabbles with fantastical, hallucinogenic visuals that add dimension to Lennon’s loss and grief. There’s a lot of alcohol, and in the local pub, Cornelius introduces John as his half-deaf cousin Kenney. They drink, they sing, and, at one point, John almost has it out with a local. The novel is peppered with Lennon/Beatle lyrics, as well as Beach Boys, Peter Frampton, and other songs of the times.My second favorite chapter was a detour to the now-closed, occult-ish Amethyst hotel, a place that is like a twisted, perverted Valhalla, run by an Odin-like character, “Joe Director.” What happens there is captivating, and brings out Lennon’s fractious, belligerent nature when he is expected to take part in ranting and screaming with a young couple that are staying there. It is also a heartbreaking interlude, where mourning and memories infringe on John’s thoughts. Later, there’s an episode of a Plato-like cave that brings Lennon to dark, spiritual thoughts. “Deathhauntedness.”“The fear that it’s all going to end and the measuring out of the time that is left or might be…and the stewing in the past and the sense of every time being maybe the last time and everything is charged and everything glows and the night terrors that come in a soak of sweat and the sentiment and the fear and the poison and the pain…”At turns turbulent, laconic, elliptical, ancient, psychotropic, and sad, I was not the same when I exited these mystical, mythical pages.“There have been other animals among these rocks before. He can feel them here still. In the sand deeply buried their chalk-white and brittle bones—Elkbone.Wolfbone.Sealbone.”Beatlebone.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful. Dream #9: The Cost of Creativity By Jill I. Shtulman The year 1978 was not a creatively rewarding one for John Lennon – yes, THAT John Lennon. He spent most of his time in America, playing househusband and nursemaid to his young son Sean. After undergoing primal scream therapy with Arthur Janov, he viewed himself as unburdened…yet he was also creatively blocked.This is the John Lennon we meet in Kevin Barry’s audacious and often brilliant new novel, Beatlebone. At the start of the novel, he has escaped from the heart of New York City to the west coast of Ireland, where he owns (yes, really!) a tiny island that the locals have dubbed “Beatle Island.”But anyone who expects a straight narrative about a complex and troubled musician has another thing in store. The true theme of Beatlebone is the heavy costs and rewards of creativity. This fictional John says, “What it’s about? It’s about what you’ve got to put yourself through to make anything worthwhile. It’s about going to the dark places and using what you find there.”Kevin Barry is like a magician channeling John Lennon, displaying him as a searching, profane, and lost soul who must get to his own island, literally and figuratively. He must virtually enclose himself in a cave of dead bones, where “he has all the words and all of its noise and all of its squall.” He must look closely to see the tiny details in order to capture the larger scope. Throughout this book there are wisps – echoes really – of words that Beatles fans will associate with some of John’s (and other musicians) songs, but they are so beautifully intertwined with the narrative that lose attention for one second and you’ll miss them.The book was a solid 5 star but here is where it rose to 6 stars: Kevin Barry interjects his own search for creativity in the narrative. As the novel temporarily shifts from fiction to memoir, the author wirtes, “…what’s left to us is mediated, and it can only be built up again in gimcrack reconstructions, with scenic façade, but if we can get the voices right, the fiction may hold for a while at least.”When he surrenders the spotlight to John, it’s impossible not to view him in a whole different light, understanding the pains that the author has taken to “get it right.” This is an amazing book that will make my personal Top Ten list. Having said that, it’s not for everyone; certainly not for those who are squeamish about profuse profanity nor those who are not willing to journey on a kind of “magical mystery tour”. And oh yes, the number 9 plays prominently, including the division into 9 chapters. Read it and be awed!
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