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Days Without End
343 pages
A brutal yet breathtakingly tender frontier epic where love and found family bloom amidst the carnage of 19th-century America.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like listening to a campfire confession that is equal parts harrowing and beautiful. The narrative moves at a steady, rhythmic pace, carried by a vernacular voice that is intensely poetic, turning the horrors of the American frontier into something almost mythic. You are plunged into a gritty, blood-soaked atmosphere where extreme violence and the atrocities of war are described with matter-of-fact clarity. Yet, beneath the mud and gunpowder, the book radiates an unexpected, sunlit warmth. It is a profound exploration of queer love, survival, and the fierce creation of a found family in a world designed to destroy them. This is a read for those who crave gorgeous, lyrical sentences juxtaposed with unflinching historical brutality, ultimately rewarding them with a deeply moving testament to human endurance.
- Mood
- harrowing
- melancholic
- gritty
- unexpectedly warm
- Tone
- lyrical
- matter-of-fact
- tender
- unflinching
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- queer love and survival · found family · brutality of empire · beauty amidst carnage · trauma and endurance
- The writing
- The prose is written in a distinct, vernacular Irish-American dialect that is intensely poetic, rhythmic, and hypnotic.
- The arc
- The journey moves from the raw, chaotic trauma of survival through harrowing violence to a hard-won, fragile domestic peace.
- Who it's for
- This is for readers who appreciate gorgeous, lyrical sentences juxtaposed with unflinching historical violence and a deeply tender queer romance.
Content notes
- graphic violence
- war trauma
- genocide of Indigenous peoples
- historical racism and slurs
- homophobia
About the book
Winner of the 2016 Costa Book of the Year and longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize.
Sebastian Barry's sensational new novel set in mid-19th Century America.
After signing up for the US army in the 1850s, aged barely seventeen, Thomas McNulty and his brother-in-arms, John Cole, fight in the Indian Wars and the Civil War.Having both fled terrible hardships, their days are now vivid and filled with wonder, despite the horrors they both see and are complicit in. Then when a young Indian girl crosses their path, the possibility of lasting happiness seems within reach, if only they can survive.
Description from Open Library.
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