Night Boat to TangierPaperback

Night boats to Tangier come and go as two old buddies, Irish hard men who've shared lifetimes of law-breaking adventures and heart-breaking romances, wait at a Spanish seaport hoping one's estranged daughter will arrive on a ferry from Tangier -- or show up to catch a boat going the other way. The tumble of words spilling from the mouths and minds of the pair are grand and beautiful on their own; fortunately for readers wondering if there's a story here, there is! It's a sordid tale, it seems, of booze, heroin, crime and, at the center of it, a romance that is so fine that we know, because these two aging crooks are, after all, Irish literary creations, it is doomed by excess and jealousy and alcohol and drugs and worse! Those evils can result in no good for the two old buddies. They are great compadres and great rivals, too!

Because the two men are waiting at the ferry terminal for a daughter who seems to be one of a horde of dreadlocked young people swarming indolently across the Spanish landscape, because they are waiting for Dilly, the 23-year-old daughter of one of the men, this novel has been compared with Beckett's "Waiting for Godot." I think it is richer, more subtle, more wonderful!

Does Dilly show up? Find the answer to that question is just one of the reasons to read this beautiful piece of prose!

Two Irishmen, aged out of the drug trade, wait in a Spanish ferry terminal anticipating this is the night they will find Dilly, the daughter of one of these shipwrecked souls. She's coming in from Tangier. Or going to. They haven't seen her in three years.

Their dialogue across 24 hours of waiting and flashbacks to their years of want, fulfillment, addictions, loyalty, betrayal, vengeance, business-like violence and atonement is dark, lush, cryptic and revealing. Their youth is the father of their first years of old age.

It's funny. It's gritty. It's one of the top reads of 2019 for me.

I read Kevin Barry's "City Of Bohane" on my kindle and knew that future Barry books would be hardback. My wife and I loved it. If you're at all like me, you also read the negative reviews to see why people don't like a book.

Some people don't like the fact that Mr. Barry does not use quote marks and they felt lost and jumbled between dialog and description. It's true, he does not use quote marks; neither does Cormac McCarthy. If you pay attention to what you're reading, it's easy to tell the difference between dialog and not dialog. If you are a stickler for quote marks, this book will not be pleasant read.

Some people felt that the two main male characters were so reprehensible that they could not like them and so could not like the book, some to the point that they could not finish the book. If that is one of your criteria, you may not like this book. I, on the other hand, like Dostoyevsky and I cannot think of a major character in any of his novels that I would describe as pleasant.

One person described the people in the book as misogynistic. Knowing that the main characters were part of the criminal class in the British Isles, I had a suspicion what the issue was before I read the book. Now that I've read it, I'm certain: it's the use of the dreaded "C" word. It is used 8 or 9 times . Some people in the UK and Ireland use the C word in largely the same way Americans use the the 7 letter slang term for anus and most of the characters in this book fall into that group of people. For what it's worth all of the female characters in this book are stronger people than the two main protagonists. If the use of the C word in dialog will upset you, this book is not for you.

I don't mind lack of quote marks, unpleasant main characters, or the use of the C word. I loved the writing, plot (yes, there is one) , and even the characters. I plan to read it it again at least twice.

This is another book group read. I wasn’t smitten with this book. About a fourth of the way through, I found myself wondering why I was reading about these awful people. Still, it was so lovingly recommended that I insisted on finishing it so I could decide what I thought of it.

Now that I’ve finished it, I find myself asking what was this book about? On one level it’s about the friendship between these two men, Charlie and Maurice, from this youth through their adult years. They did their best to destroy their friendship and their lives.

The mystery in all of this is Maurice’s daughter Dilly. I can’t decide if her fathers obsession with her is an unhealthy one. It is I believe, but maybe not as sick as I’d suspected. I was happy that she decided not to stay around he father and his best mate. She found a sort of freedom, while the others took a lifetime to find any sort of peace!