I picked this up in the library on a whim. When I first read the synopsis about an off-the-rails teenager in Ireland from a bad estate who keeps getting into trouble, I was expecting this would be the usual stereotypical Irish novel - fun and gritty, but a little bit tired around the edges.

A Booker longlister, this turned out to be a fabulous read. It took me about 50 pages to get into it - at the start it was definitely feeling a bit like a Roddy Doyle book or Ardal O'Hanlon's The Talk of the Town (I feel like I've read too many of those now) - but this novel had a lot more depth to it. This is a story of real, honest love, of a bad boy trying to make good, of a past that won't release it's hold on him.

Opening with the protagonist's arrival as a witness at court, you know from the beginning that something has happened, but Wall spins a gripping tale, leaving you constantly turning the pages with a sense of foreboding about what's going to transpire. A small-time player with the bad boys in the town, the leading character ups the ante when he gets the sister of a local gangster pregnant, unintentionally propelling himself into the big league at a time when he wants to forge a path on the straight and narrow.

Written in the first person in the voice of the main character, the prose is modern and the rhetoric 'Irish wide boy' urban street talk, yet somehow Wall also manages to make it poetic and lyrical in places, strongly evoking the sense of quiet solidarity and contentment in the gentle harbour village, and the juxtaposed sense of malice and fear around the estates of the town.

I found this to be a very emotional book - a novel about love and loyalty, grudges and revenge, the harsh reality of being tarred by your past, of wanting release but finding yourself pulled back into the quagmire by an invisible thread.

A surprising but well deserved 4.5 stars. ( )

Billy is a young man in Ireland with a past as an addict and minor criminal. His best friend has died of AIDS, although at first Billy claims tetanus. Billy has to go on the run after crossing a powerful dealer – Pat ‘The Baker’ Baker, “a psychopath with Asperger’s Syndrome” by getting his favorite sister pregnant.

Billy and Jazz – Pat Baker’s sister – settle in a distant quiet seaside town after their daughter is born, where he becomes a diesel mechanic and ship deliverer. The problem is that Pat Baker won’t forget them.

There’s a sad beauty to the novel that comes from the pull between contemporary Irish life and the traditions of the past. It’s a story that gets better as it goes. ( )

I started off reading this book thinking I don't really like the style. Backwards and fowarding all the time, even changing things from paragraph to paragraph but in the end I thought it was well written. A great book for discussion at book club.

An Irish lad (I don't think we were told his name and if we did I missed it) whose mother was a pro and a drunk gets to run wild with a bad crowd and he's into everything that he shouldn't be. His best friend Max dies and tells him to get with this girl Jazz. He does, she gets pregnant, her brother Pat (a drug dealer & all round nasty guy) breaks his legs and when he recuperates he goes on the run until he can come back and get Jazz and the baby (Kaylie). They make a decent life for themselves because he is clever and has become a diesel engineer and can fix engines, then Pat finds where they are and all hell breaks loose and the good life changes. ( )

This is the Country is the story of an unnamed young male narrator, living in an Ireland that is grim and difficult, a place where the local industries have been taken over by foreigners or moved somewhere else entirely, where the most prosperous business by far is run by the small-town-boy-made good, a hooligan who turns crime into a thriving enterprise.

Our hero's father ran away from his responsibilities, and his mother is an apathetic alcoholic. Without much direction, he soon finds himself on the wrong side of the law, taking any drug that comes his way, indulging in petty theft, pulling mindless pranks, and in the process, forging a small semblance of a family with his friend Max.

When Max dies of tetanus, he is left alone, and soon takes up with Jacintha (or Jazz), the favored sister of Pat the Baker, head of the town's crime cartel. When Jazz gets pregnant, Pat is enraged, and breaks both of our hero's legs as a warning. It doesn't matter, though, because with Jazz and their daughter Kaylie, he has found his salvation. He cleans up his act, takes his family far out of the town, into the country, where he earns an honest living as a mechanic. The young family tentatively sketches out for themselves the beginnings of a normal life, and are happy, though the spectre of Pat's eventual retribution hovers ominously over their lives.

This is the Country is an unexpected delight. The writing is gritty yet tender, achingly poignant at times and funny at others. The unnamed main character worms its way into the reader's heart as he fumbles his way through life. It is a fine achievement of a novel, and the TurboBookSnob is grateful to the Booker judges for introducing her to this talented author.

Here's another one looked over for the Booker shortlist, and for the life of me, I don't understand why. I've already read two of the shortlisted books, and this one is better than either of them. As I've often noted, Irish authors rank highly as some of my favorite authors ever, and I am going to seek out and buy anything this author's ever written. He is a phenomenal writer, and I highly recommend this book.

The narrator of the story, set in Ireland, is raised by a mom who's constantly drunk and has an endless parade of men coming and going; he never knew who his father might have been. He grows up pretty much on his own, with a best friend named Max who ultimately ends up dead of tetanus. As a teen, he goes from drug to drug, doing acts of petty crime, and then makes the mistake of getting involved with Pat Baker's sister Jacintha (Jazz). Pat is the local head honcho, tied up in everything from drugs to prostitution, even finding a better pimp for his other sister, Stacey. The narrator goes to Pat, tells him he wants to start seeing Jazz, but Jazz is his favorite, and the narrator is told he's not good enough for her and threatens him if he gets near her. But he does, and Jazz finds herself pregnant. Now the narrator has to go on the run to hide from Pat.

This sounds and is a wee bit overdramatic, but the main story itself is not what kept me reading. What really struck me is the entire story of the narrator trying to escape from his upbringing and his early life to change and straighten out his life, but encounters constant setback.

By way of describing the contrasts of who he was versus who he is now, reflecting back on time wasted while seeking out what was truly important in a person's life, the author (through the narrator) also gives us a look at modern society in Ireland: monied/poor, urban/rural, the concept of family, old/new. At least this was my take on it.

The prose is excellent, the narrator's characterization is done so well you'd think you knew the guy. Be aware that if you're seeking a story with a happy ending, you're not going to find it here; I felt that the end of the story was realistic, in keeping with the tone of the rest of the book.

I HIGHLY recommend this book.

(bought from UK) ( )