Title: At Swim Two Boys - Softcover

4.1

9,276 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743207130 ISBN 13: 9780743207133

Publisher: Scribner

Set in Dublin and its near surrounds AT SWIM, TWO BOYS follows the turbulent year to Easter 1916. At its core it tells the love of two boys, Jim, a naive and reticent scholar, the younger son of foolish, aspirant shopkeeper Mr Mack, and Doyler, the dark rough diamond son of Mr Mack's old army pal. Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of rock where gentlemen bathe in the scandalous nude, the two boys meet day after day. There they make a pact: that Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, they will swim the bay to the distant beacon of the Muglins rock, to raise the Green and claim it for themselves. As Ireland sets forth towards her uncertain glory there unfolds a love story of the utmost tenderness, carrying the reader through the turbulence of the times like a full blown sail. AT SWIM, TWO BOYS is written with great verve and mastery. It shares those elements that are the marks of all great books - the breadth of its canvas, the skill of its brush, the intensity of its subjects and, above all, the shining light of its humanity.

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Review:

"The New York Times Book Review"

A dangerous, glorious book: the kind that is likely to make absolutely anyone cry and laugh in public places.

Robin Hemley

"Chicago Tribune"

In exquisitely sculpted prose, Jamie O'Neill...achieves a kind of richness of scope and ambition that makes one reluctant to come to its tragic and inevitable close.

Mark Harris

"Entertainment Weekly"

A work of wild, vaulting ambition and achievement...Rich and allusive, blisteringly exuberant...one of the most psychologically accurate and moving love stories in recent literature.

"The New York Times Book Review"A dangerous, glorious book: the kind that is likely to make absolutely anyone cry and laugh in public places.

Robin Hemley"Chicago Tribune"In exquisitely sculpted prose, Jamie O'Neill...achieves a kind of richness of scope and ambition that makes one reluctant to come to its tragic and inevitable close.

Mark Harris"Entertainment Weekly"A work of wild, vaulting ambition and achievement...Rich and allusive, blisteringly exuberant...one of the most psychologically accurate and moving love stories in recent literature.

Peter Ackroyd author of "The Plato Papers" and "London: The Biography" The music of Jamie O'Neill's prose creates a new Irish symphony.

Andrew Solomon author of "The Noonday Demon" Reading this book is like swimming itself. You have to take a deep breath first, and plunge yourself into an alien element -- but as you make your way forward, it dictates quiet, ecstatic rhythms of a heightened reality. It's a book in which the full range of human passion is implied: a highly erotic love story that manages to be neither anatomically specific nor euphemistic; a narrative about politics and patriotism that avoids jingoism or sentimentality. There is a gentleness, a loveliness here that is extremely rare in modern fiction.

Felice Picano author of "Like People in History" The secret is out, James Joyce and Oscar Wilde had a child: his name is Jamie O'Neill, and his novel is a big, character-filled Edwardian triple-decker.

"Kirkus Reviews" Altogether the best literary news out of Ireland since the maturity of Roddy Doyle.

About the Author:

Jamie O'Neill was brought up in Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin. He spent ten years working as a night porter whilst writing AT SWIM, TWO BOYS.

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