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Beatlebone
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.
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.
299 pages, Hardcover
First published October 29, 2015
About the author
Kevin Barry
75 books1,039 followersKevin Barry is an Irish writer. He is the author of two collections of short stories, and the novel City of Bohane, which was the winner of the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
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September 24, 2024I was jolted by this book.
I knew nothing about it before I downloaded it except that it was by Kevin Barry. Fresh from reading two other Kevin Barry books, I simply wanted to continue discovering his curious writing voice. The title should have given me a hint of what it might be about but it didn't. As it turns out, Beetlebone refers to a fictional album that John Lennon made in the summer of 1978.
The jolt I experienced didn't come from the explanation of the title but from the various locations of the story in the Clew Bay area of the west of Ireland:
We all have places that make our hearts beat faster, childhood places, first love places, parent's graves places, ancestor places. The Clew Bay area is all of those things for me. And one of the islands beaded across the inner part of the bay is particularly important in my life, a little island of maybe fifteen acres that was the destination of many of the boating trips of my childhood. The shape and atmosphere of that island fed my child's imagination. It had a steep cliff on the ocean side where the sea had eroded it, and it tailed down to lower ground on the mainland side, ending in a long spit of shingle that connected to another tiny island at low tide. The shingle at the tip of the tiny island connected to the mainland under a narrow strait of water. As a child, I imagined the island as a large fish stranded half-way out of the water, the part nearest the shore being its tail, trapped by the land, the cliff end being its wide open mouth as if it were screaming to the broad ocean to come rescue it. If I'd known more about geology I might have imagined the opposite, that the island was clinging to the mainland in fear of the ocean, because, as Kevin Barry describes it, Clew Bay is a flooded valley–its many tiny islands are merely a scattered range of drumlin hills submerged at their bases by some unimaginably violent deluge.
Kevin Barry has clearly spent a lot of time thinking about the Clew Bay area and the result is that this book offers two stories and two main characters which eventually merge together just as waves merge on a beach. When the wave of this book rolls out there is only one story left, a story about finding inspiration.
In the first version of the story, Kevin Barry imagines John Lennon visiting the Clew Bay area in the maytime of 1978, passing through Newport, Mallaranney, and Achill, and having a variety of adventures in all of those locations as he tries to evade the reporters who are on his tail. It's maybe significant that in one of the places he puts up for the night, the only reading material in the bedside locker is The Anatomy of Melancholy.
Then John makes his way to the other side of the bay to visit the island of Dorinish (marked with an arrow on the map) which had been his real destination all along. Finally he travels to London to record an album inspired by the entire trip.
Kevin Barry's fantasy is based partly on fact. John Lennon had visited the area in 1967, and he bought the 19 acre Dorinish island at that time. The following year, he returned to the area with Yoko Ono and stayed at a hotel across the bay in Mallaranney. They planned to build a house on their island but there is no evidence that they ever visited the west of Ireland again. Yoko Ono sold the island to a local farmer soon after Lennon's death in 1980.
In the second version of the story, which is inserted into the middle of the first, Kevin visits all the locations he mentions in the first version in search of inspiration for his Beetlebone novel. He has almost exactly the same adventures as he gives John in the first version. When both Kevin and John eventually reach Dorinish island, they are each looking for relief from their anxieties. Kevin is worrying about the book he is trying to write and John is trapped by fears of not ever being able to write songs again. He is also haunted by melancholic thoughts about his first love, his dead parents, and his Irish ancestry. He is convinced that once he is alone on his empty island, he will be able to scream away all of his anguish towards the broad ocean, and be rid of it for ever. The reality is different. Both John and Kevin retreat in fear to the safety of the mainland after only one night spent on Dorinish although they had both planned to spend a longer time there.
A seal's cave features in both stories (see the arrow at Keel in the map above), and, after each of them has spent a night there too, John and Kevin find the same thing in the cave, the inspiration they've been searching for: a new album called 'Beetlebone' for John, a new book called Beetlebone for Kevin.
Because I know the Clew Bay area, I can say with certainty that Kevin Barry describes it as a documentarist would. He invents very little with regard to the physical locations, and the local characters he includes seem drawn from life—he has a brilliant ear for dialogue and intonation. I felt he must have sat in local hotels and pubs for weeks, maybe months, watching and listening to everything that was happening around him. The result is that not only has he merged two characters and two plots but he has also merged documentary into fiction.
If I said I was jolted by this book at the beginning of the review, I can now add that the jolt I experienced was, and will be, deeply memorable.
I knew nothing about it before I downloaded it except that it was by Kevin Barry. Fresh from reading two other Kevin Barry books, I simply wanted to continue discovering his curious writing voice. The title should have given me a hint of what it might be about but it didn't. As it turns out, Beetlebone refers to a fictional album that John Lennon made in the summer of 1978.
The jolt I experienced didn't come from the explanation of the title but from the various locations of the story in the Clew Bay area of the west of Ireland:
We all have places that make our hearts beat faster, childhood places, first love places, parent's graves places, ancestor places. The Clew Bay area is all of those things for me. And one of the islands beaded across the inner part of the bay is particularly important in my life, a little island of maybe fifteen acres that was the destination of many of the boating trips of my childhood. The shape and atmosphere of that island fed my child's imagination. It had a steep cliff on the ocean side where the sea had eroded it, and it tailed down to lower ground on the mainland side, ending in a long spit of shingle that connected to another tiny island at low tide. The shingle at the tip of the tiny island connected to the mainland under a narrow strait of water. As a child, I imagined the island as a large fish stranded half-way out of the water, the part nearest the shore being its tail, trapped by the land, the cliff end being its wide open mouth as if it were screaming to the broad ocean to come rescue it. If I'd known more about geology I might have imagined the opposite, that the island was clinging to the mainland in fear of the ocean, because, as Kevin Barry describes it, Clew Bay is a flooded valley–its many tiny islands are merely a scattered range of drumlin hills submerged at their bases by some unimaginably violent deluge.
Kevin Barry has clearly spent a lot of time thinking about the Clew Bay area and the result is that this book offers two stories and two main characters which eventually merge together just as waves merge on a beach. When the wave of this book rolls out there is only one story left, a story about finding inspiration.
In the first version of the story, Kevin Barry imagines John Lennon visiting the Clew Bay area in the maytime of 1978, passing through Newport, Mallaranney, and Achill, and having a variety of adventures in all of those locations as he tries to evade the reporters who are on his tail. It's maybe significant that in one of the places he puts up for the night, the only reading material in the bedside locker is The Anatomy of Melancholy.
Then John makes his way to the other side of the bay to visit the island of Dorinish (marked with an arrow on the map) which had been his real destination all along. Finally he travels to London to record an album inspired by the entire trip.
Kevin Barry's fantasy is based partly on fact. John Lennon had visited the area in 1967, and he bought the 19 acre Dorinish island at that time. The following year, he returned to the area with Yoko Ono and stayed at a hotel across the bay in Mallaranney. They planned to build a house on their island but there is no evidence that they ever visited the west of Ireland again. Yoko Ono sold the island to a local farmer soon after Lennon's death in 1980.
In the second version of the story, which is inserted into the middle of the first, Kevin visits all the locations he mentions in the first version in search of inspiration for his Beetlebone novel. He has almost exactly the same adventures as he gives John in the first version. When both Kevin and John eventually reach Dorinish island, they are each looking for relief from their anxieties. Kevin is worrying about the book he is trying to write and John is trapped by fears of not ever being able to write songs again. He is also haunted by melancholic thoughts about his first love, his dead parents, and his Irish ancestry. He is convinced that once he is alone on his empty island, he will be able to scream away all of his anguish towards the broad ocean, and be rid of it for ever. The reality is different. Both John and Kevin retreat in fear to the safety of the mainland after only one night spent on Dorinish although they had both planned to spend a longer time there.
A seal's cave features in both stories (see the arrow at Keel in the map above), and, after each of them has spent a night there too, John and Kevin find the same thing in the cave, the inspiration they've been searching for: a new album called 'Beetlebone' for John, a new book called Beetlebone for Kevin.
Because I know the Clew Bay area, I can say with certainty that Kevin Barry describes it as a documentarist would. He invents very little with regard to the physical locations, and the local characters he includes seem drawn from life—he has a brilliant ear for dialogue and intonation. I felt he must have sat in local hotels and pubs for weeks, maybe months, watching and listening to everything that was happening around him. The result is that not only has he merged two characters and two plots but he has also merged documentary into fiction.
If I said I was jolted by this book at the beginning of the review, I can now add that the jolt I experienced was, and will be, deeply memorable.
July 21, 2017
In the late 1960s John Lennon bought an island off the west coast of Ireland. Most Irish people are aware of it. Ask anyone about John Lennon's island or 'Beatle Island' and they'll know what you're talking about. Beatlebone is a fictionalised tale of John Lennon's attempt to visit his island in 1978 in order to combat his writer's block and to finally have a place to Scream. And it is a masterpiece.
The novel is far from conventional. In fact, it won the Goldsmith's Prize, which is an award specifically granted to novels which challenge the conventional novel form. The whole book is heavily influenced by that spectre who sits on the shoulder of every Irish writer, James Joyce. There are some chapters in which Beatlebone turns into a play script, exactly as in Ulysses. However, where most writers would just end up with a poor pastiche of Joyce's great novel (as Orwell did with his modernist mishap A Clergyman's Daughter), Kevin Barry takes on the great Dubliner and triumphs in every aspect.
The whole novel reads like a Surrealist jaunt in the West of Ireland. Hints of Du Maurier come through when the novel decides to tread along recesses of the paranormal, whilst many of the characters themselves seem to be close relatives of the persons who inhabit the scripts of Martin McDonagh. John Lennon himself doesn't really 'star' in this novel. In fact, it would be wholly possible for you to read this novel and never once realise that you are reading about John Lennon. He is only ever referred to as John and mentions of his superstardom are fleeting.
In a typically postmodern move, there is one chapter about two-thirds of the way through Beatlebone in which the whole narrative is paused and Barry decides to tell us about how he went about writing the novel. He writes about his own visit to Beatle Island and his adventures around Clew Bay, where all of the novel takes place. After this chapter, the narrative continues on exactly as before. It is this chapter which pushed this novel from a great book to a fucking great book.
I absolutely adored this book. Kevin Barry has been a big name in Irish writing for a while now and I finally understand why. Every Irish writer must write with the burden of those great names behind them; Joyce, Beckett, Bernard Shaw, Wilde, Yeats. Instead of cowering away from these names, Barry challenges them. This town ain't big enough for the both of us, Sparks once sang, and Barry wears that sentiment on his spud-Irish sleeve.
The novel is far from conventional. In fact, it won the Goldsmith's Prize, which is an award specifically granted to novels which challenge the conventional novel form. The whole book is heavily influenced by that spectre who sits on the shoulder of every Irish writer, James Joyce. There are some chapters in which Beatlebone turns into a play script, exactly as in Ulysses. However, where most writers would just end up with a poor pastiche of Joyce's great novel (as Orwell did with his modernist mishap A Clergyman's Daughter), Kevin Barry takes on the great Dubliner and triumphs in every aspect.
The whole novel reads like a Surrealist jaunt in the West of Ireland. Hints of Du Maurier come through when the novel decides to tread along recesses of the paranormal, whilst many of the characters themselves seem to be close relatives of the persons who inhabit the scripts of Martin McDonagh. John Lennon himself doesn't really 'star' in this novel. In fact, it would be wholly possible for you to read this novel and never once realise that you are reading about John Lennon. He is only ever referred to as John and mentions of his superstardom are fleeting.
In a typically postmodern move, there is one chapter about two-thirds of the way through Beatlebone in which the whole narrative is paused and Barry decides to tell us about how he went about writing the novel. He writes about his own visit to Beatle Island and his adventures around Clew Bay, where all of the novel takes place. After this chapter, the narrative continues on exactly as before. It is this chapter which pushed this novel from a great book to a fucking great book.
I absolutely adored this book. Kevin Barry has been a big name in Irish writing for a while now and I finally understand why. Every Irish writer must write with the burden of those great names behind them; Joyce, Beckett, Bernard Shaw, Wilde, Yeats. Instead of cowering away from these names, Barry challenges them. This town ain't big enough for the both of us, Sparks once sang, and Barry wears that sentiment on his spud-Irish sleeve.
June 17, 2024
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 (like vegan but with fish and seafood).
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.
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.
January 6, 2017
A surreal, poetic and wild tribute to John Lennon by another of Ireland's talented young writers. This book imagines Lennon travelling round the west of Ireland trying to reach an island he owns while evading the attention of the press. This leads to a series of strange encounters and reminiscences, some of which have some factual basis, and explorations of his Liverpool Irish roots. There is also a chapter about two thirds of the way through in which Barry explains his own motivations and how the book germinated, but for the most part the style is inspired by Lennon. I found this a very enjoyable read.
January 26, 2021
Thanks to Fionnuala’s review, I became aware of this book, wondering why I hadn’t heard of it before. As I started it, I wondered if I could overcome my slight misgiving about knowing that John Lennon didn’t like to be alone (so much so that Yoko One set him up with a companion/girlfriend when the couple had separated for a time) and wasn’t likely to plan such a solitary journey. In the nonfiction section of the book Barry writes that John visited Japan alone in 1978. I knew he took a trip to Japan with his wife and son then, but I could find no evidence of his traveling alone.*
No matter: The account of John trying to get to his tiny island in Ireland is fiction and the voice Barry creates for him is excellent; as I read, I could hear John's ‘real’ voice in my head, without trying. (I’m sure the 5-part documentary on Lennon/McCartney I’ve been watching helped.* It focuses on interviews the two had given through the years and I’ve just gotten to 1979.)
Some intense scenes, such as the one written as a play, left me with disturbed dreams. In the nonfictional (I’m assuming) section Barry’s description of his own experiences— seeing ghosts on the water, for example—are memorable. But, maybe because I know Liverpool better (I haven’t been there) than Clew Bay, I enjoyed the most Barry’s short time in Liverpool— especially the bit about the time-slip on a certain street. It reminded me of the amazing ‘Free as a Bird’ video.
__
Update (Jan. 25): In the documentary I mentioned above, I just listened to an interview in which John says he was in Hong Kong "cause Yoko had sent me on a trip round the world by myself." They must've arranged it well enough that it was secret.
No matter: The account of John trying to get to his tiny island in Ireland is fiction and the voice Barry creates for him is excellent; as I read, I could hear John's ‘real’ voice in my head, without trying. (I’m sure the 5-part documentary on Lennon/McCartney I’ve been watching helped.* It focuses on interviews the two had given through the years and I’ve just gotten to 1979.)
Some intense scenes, such as the one written as a play, left me with disturbed dreams. In the nonfictional (I’m assuming) section Barry’s description of his own experiences— seeing ghosts on the water, for example—are memorable. But, maybe because I know Liverpool better (I haven’t been there) than Clew Bay, I enjoyed the most Barry’s short time in Liverpool— especially the bit about the time-slip on a certain street. It reminded me of the amazing ‘Free as a Bird’ video.
__
Update (Jan. 25): In the documentary I mentioned above, I just listened to an interview in which John says he was in Hong Kong "cause Yoko had sent me on a trip round the world by myself." They must've arranged it well enough that it was secret.
February 4, 2017
“People go strange out here, John. You wouldn’t be the first and you wouldn’t be the last.”
This wild, free-wheeling tale imagines a visit by John Lennon to Dorinish island (pictured above) off the west coast of Ireland in 1978. Haunted by his own demons, particularly the premature death of his mother Julia, he intends to spend three days by himself and "scream his fucking lungs out." Things don't go exactly to plan. For one thing John can't remember which one of the 365 islands in the bay belongs to him. And the pack of hungry reporters on his tail are not helping. With the assistance of local fixer Cornelius O'Grady, he might just reach his destination, but it will involve a few diversions and disguises along the way.
Kevin Barry does a terrific job of depicting Lennon's fragile state, overwhelmed with despair and self-loathing. But there is also a lightness to the story, and his famous wit is delightfully represented. The big-hearted, wise Cornelius is a wonderful creation and delivers a lot of the best lines - he acts as a kind of sounding-board/spirit guide for John. Eccentric characters of this untamed Mayo outpost come and go throughout their adventure - the face of a shady hotel proprietor "is alive with with tics and nervy flutters, as if there are small desperate birds trapped beneath the skin." And this craggy frontier that is famed for its feral beauty becomes the uneasy backdrop to an unravelling mind:
Around two thirds of the way through, Beatlebone takes an abrupt change of direction. Barry begins to describe his own visit to Clew Bay while researching the story. It's a risky manoeuvre - quite jarring, at first. But I became intrigued by it as Lennon and Barry's journeys begin to coalesce, and it really extends the impact of the novel. I suppose this interjection is one of the reasons that the book won the Goldsmiths Prize, which rewards experimental fiction.
It's a brave story to write. Little is really known about John Lennon at this time in his life and details of his Irish visits are thin on the ground. But Barry takes us on a utterly convincing journey inside this icon's head, and we begin to understand the loneliness and misery that fame has brought him. I must admit that I found the prose a little overwrought at times and there were parts of the novel that didn't work for me, such as a showy stream of consciousness passage towards the end. But this strange trip, equal parts tragic and comic, is worth the effort. It is a gloriously inventive tale, a surreal and profound work of genius.
This wild, free-wheeling tale imagines a visit by John Lennon to Dorinish island (pictured above) off the west coast of Ireland in 1978. Haunted by his own demons, particularly the premature death of his mother Julia, he intends to spend three days by himself and "scream his fucking lungs out." Things don't go exactly to plan. For one thing John can't remember which one of the 365 islands in the bay belongs to him. And the pack of hungry reporters on his tail are not helping. With the assistance of local fixer Cornelius O'Grady, he might just reach his destination, but it will involve a few diversions and disguises along the way.
Kevin Barry does a terrific job of depicting Lennon's fragile state, overwhelmed with despair and self-loathing. But there is also a lightness to the story, and his famous wit is delightfully represented. The big-hearted, wise Cornelius is a wonderful creation and delivers a lot of the best lines - he acts as a kind of sounding-board/spirit guide for John. Eccentric characters of this untamed Mayo outpost come and go throughout their adventure - the face of a shady hotel proprietor "is alive with with tics and nervy flutters, as if there are small desperate birds trapped beneath the skin." And this craggy frontier that is famed for its feral beauty becomes the uneasy backdrop to an unravelling mind:
"Imagine the near-perpetual assault of rain on a cracked windowpane, down at the shivery end of that dripping boreen - a country laneway, or a little road, dank and sodden between the whitethorn and the haw, places usually possessed in the Irish mythos by savage melancholy - with the veggie patch and the hedgerow wine, and the rising damp, and the nitty children, and the freaky dogs cowering in the yard as the wind shudders their skinny flanks - and the vast hysterical skies - never light for long, never dark for long"
Around two thirds of the way through, Beatlebone takes an abrupt change of direction. Barry begins to describe his own visit to Clew Bay while researching the story. It's a risky manoeuvre - quite jarring, at first. But I became intrigued by it as Lennon and Barry's journeys begin to coalesce, and it really extends the impact of the novel. I suppose this interjection is one of the reasons that the book won the Goldsmiths Prize, which rewards experimental fiction.
It's a brave story to write. Little is really known about John Lennon at this time in his life and details of his Irish visits are thin on the ground. But Barry takes us on a utterly convincing journey inside this icon's head, and we begin to understand the loneliness and misery that fame has brought him. I must admit that I found the prose a little overwrought at times and there were parts of the novel that didn't work for me, such as a showy stream of consciousness passage towards the end. But this strange trip, equal parts tragic and comic, is worth the effort. It is a gloriously inventive tale, a surreal and profound work of genius.
August 17, 2016
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 writes, “…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!
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 writes, “…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!
May 5, 2016
This was a 4 and a half star book for me. I am a fan of the author and of the late John Lennon. I like the uncooperative "attitude" of the west of Ireland - the relentless rain, the locals who may pretend to be obtuse, and the evasive sun. The author captures these aspects of Mayo which becomes another character in the book in addition to John Lennon and Cornelius, his local driver.
It is 1978 and John is desperate to get to an island in Clew Bay that he bought years earlier. Much of their time is taken up in the search for the island as John doesn't remember its name and is trying to avoid the media who have heard he is in Mayo. The ensuing comedy of errors I decided was due to Cornelius just being a Mayo man. It was an adventure for him, and a chance to escape the dreariness of the never-ending rain. John, despite his Irish roots, is just another Brit, albeit a very wealthy one. While it seems John manages to disguise his true identity, a 112 year old woman knows him immediately, leading me to the conclude that everyone knows. This is one example of the fake obtuseness of the citizens of Mayo.
John is desperate to escape the pressure of being a public figure, and his feelings of loss going back to childhood. Some may not feel a lot of pity for the famous who seemingly wallow in misery, yet Barry makes Lennon a figure worthy of our compassion.
It is 1978 and John is desperate to get to an island in Clew Bay that he bought years earlier. Much of their time is taken up in the search for the island as John doesn't remember its name and is trying to avoid the media who have heard he is in Mayo. The ensuing comedy of errors I decided was due to Cornelius just being a Mayo man. It was an adventure for him, and a chance to escape the dreariness of the never-ending rain. John, despite his Irish roots, is just another Brit, albeit a very wealthy one. While it seems John manages to disguise his true identity, a 112 year old woman knows him immediately, leading me to the conclude that everyone knows. This is one example of the fake obtuseness of the citizens of Mayo.
John is desperate to escape the pressure of being a public figure, and his feelings of loss going back to childhood. Some may not feel a lot of pity for the famous who seemingly wallow in misery, yet Barry makes Lennon a figure worthy of our compassion.
August 30, 2016
started on audio & switched over to print... it didn't help.
At first blush, this was merely irritating in the way that Adele is irritating when singing about “when we were young” when she is twenty-freaking-five. Most of the time I can forget that she is a (hyperbolically successful) child and focus on her vocals and turns of phrase. But when every station of the radio plays her songs every 30 minutes and she must remind us that she is SO OLD and can NEVER REGAIN SO MUCH in every new single, I start wanting someone to slap her. And the way exhausted, world-weary, haunted John Lennon reads here, he should be well past his prime, until one realizes he’s thirty-seven and I can’t help it, the eye-rolls are happening.
And yes, depression is real and IMPORTANT blah blah blah & manic-depressiveness as well which he appears at times to exhibit… but really, in the end, what I’m truly left with is a great big man-child who can’t keep his shite together and can’t stay with his steadfast wife and his beautiful heart-rending children because he’ll go mad with the happiness of it, the normalcy of it or some such soul-crushing thing. And this is supposed to be deep and fascinating and illuminating and what-not because the man was an artistic genius.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the Beatles. I think their work was truly groundbreaking and changed the course of music and rhythm and taking risks etc. etc. etc. I don’t think we could have a Thom Yorke today without a Paul McCartney and John Lennon back in the day. But I’m also a fan of grown-ass men. I can read unlikeable main characters, or flawed characters or whatnot… I’m down with that. I just read The Nest and against all expectations loved it despite yet another set of privileged white NYC-ers being faced with a threat to their trust fund. The difference is this; those characters are flawed with purpose and they have true consequences to their missteps, and sometimes they learn. Or at least the flaws are OMG! to the reader and we read them as cautionary tales. Here, the flaws and the narcissistic journey to find himself, and find his voice/art/history/truth/transcendence/whatever-the-eff he came out here to get away from the crowds and his wife and “the baby” (baby no-name, not even “my baby” or anything else remotely connected); here it is treated as sacred and imbued with holiness and otherworldliness and it seems this is only the case because it’s JOHN LENNON, GENIUS. And I’m just not buying it. It’s the same reason I don’t read John Irving anymore… he always has to have one or more (male, always male) main characters that the reader is subjected to in-depth detail of their complete assholery for no other reason than to show what tormented but obviously genius artists they are. I don’t understand why that’s lauded by critics so thoroughly and it just irked the hell out of me here.
Now, despite that, it’s still a (begrudgingly) “good” rating because the writing is fairly amazing even if it makes for difficult reading. This is challenging stuff, this Odd Couple road trip that never seems to progress anywhere; between the stream of consciousness, the dreamlike, fugue-state scenes, 70’s primal scream sessions, the conversations that are sometimes out-loud, sometimes internal, sometimes might not actually be occurring but is as-a-rule, never in quotation marks and even the sudden drop of the fourth wall when the author begins to speak directly to the reader about his experiences researching the book (definitely my favorite part)… there is a lot to digest. The dialogue is full of quirk and Irish/Liverpoolian humor.
And finally, there is a wonderful vein of the supernatural, of time unhinged and familial history always at hand that feels true in the West Ireland Barry describes.
But I’m still irked.
At first blush, this was merely irritating in the way that Adele is irritating when singing about “when we were young” when she is twenty-freaking-five. Most of the time I can forget that she is a (hyperbolically successful) child and focus on her vocals and turns of phrase. But when every station of the radio plays her songs every 30 minutes and she must remind us that she is SO OLD and can NEVER REGAIN SO MUCH in every new single, I start wanting someone to slap her. And the way exhausted, world-weary, haunted John Lennon reads here, he should be well past his prime, until one realizes he’s thirty-seven and I can’t help it, the eye-rolls are happening.
And yes, depression is real and IMPORTANT blah blah blah & manic-depressiveness as well which he appears at times to exhibit… but really, in the end, what I’m truly left with is a great big man-child who can’t keep his shite together and can’t stay with his steadfast wife and his beautiful heart-rending children because he’ll go mad with the happiness of it, the normalcy of it or some such soul-crushing thing. And this is supposed to be deep and fascinating and illuminating and what-not because the man was an artistic genius.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the Beatles. I think their work was truly groundbreaking and changed the course of music and rhythm and taking risks etc. etc. etc. I don’t think we could have a Thom Yorke today without a Paul McCartney and John Lennon back in the day. But I’m also a fan of grown-ass men. I can read unlikeable main characters, or flawed characters or whatnot… I’m down with that. I just read The Nest and against all expectations loved it despite yet another set of privileged white NYC-ers being faced with a threat to their trust fund. The difference is this; those characters are flawed with purpose and they have true consequences to their missteps, and sometimes they learn. Or at least the flaws are OMG! to the reader and we read them as cautionary tales. Here, the flaws and the narcissistic journey to find himself, and find his voice/art/history/truth/transcendence/whatever-the-eff he came out here to get away from the crowds and his wife and “the baby” (baby no-name, not even “my baby” or anything else remotely connected); here it is treated as sacred and imbued with holiness and otherworldliness and it seems this is only the case because it’s JOHN LENNON, GENIUS. And I’m just not buying it. It’s the same reason I don’t read John Irving anymore… he always has to have one or more (male, always male) main characters that the reader is subjected to in-depth detail of their complete assholery for no other reason than to show what tormented but obviously genius artists they are. I don’t understand why that’s lauded by critics so thoroughly and it just irked the hell out of me here.
Now, despite that, it’s still a (begrudgingly) “good” rating because the writing is fairly amazing even if it makes for difficult reading. This is challenging stuff, this Odd Couple road trip that never seems to progress anywhere; between the stream of consciousness, the dreamlike, fugue-state scenes, 70’s primal scream sessions, the conversations that are sometimes out-loud, sometimes internal, sometimes might not actually be occurring but is as-a-rule, never in quotation marks and even the sudden drop of the fourth wall when the author begins to speak directly to the reader about his experiences researching the book (definitely my favorite part)… there is a lot to digest. The dialogue is full of quirk and Irish/Liverpoolian humor.
He read once that the hare augurs darkly in the Irish mythology. From what he can remember there is fuck all that augurs brightly in the Irish mythology.and
The examined life turns out to be a pain in the stones.
And finally, there is a wonderful vein of the supernatural, of time unhinged and familial history always at hand that feels true in the West Ireland Barry describes.
But I’m still irked.
April 21, 2018
The silence that holds is easier now and London is pinkly waking. They've been through a lot together. The rattling of the bones; the squalls and the screeching; the occult shimmers; the lonely airs; the sudden madcap waltzes; the hollowed voices; the sibilant hiss; the asylum screams; the wretched moans; the violence, love, and tenderness – beatlebone. The first of the buses goes by at a sprightly chug.
Beatlebone was on my radar last year, but without ordering it from abroad, I couldn't get a copy of it for myself. I was able to read Kevin Barry's IMPAC Dublin Literary Award-winning The City of Bohane to get a taste of his style, and it honestly didn't knock my socks off. Lo and behold, Beatlebone appeared as a two dollar remainder at the bookshop, and despite the hype, and despite my own feverish teenaged Beatlemania, I remain unwowed. I love Irish writers, I am open to surrealism, I am primed for a John Lennon story, but despite my admiration for many of Barry's passages, this simply didn't add up to much for me.
He planned to live out on his island for a bit but he never did. He bought it when he was twenty-seven in the middle of a dream. But now it's the Maytime again and he's come over a bit strange and dippy again – the hatches to the underworld are opening – and he needs to sit on his island again just for a short while and alone and look out on the bay and the fat knuckle of the holy mountain across the bay and have a natter with the bunnies and get down with the starfish and lick the salt off his chops and waggle his head like a dog after rain and Scream and let nobody come find him.
Some bits of this story are apparently real – John Lennon did buy the isle of Dorinish off Ireland's west coast, and in the Seventies, he may have made some trips there. In our fictional version, John is thirty-seven, happily married to Yoko and retired from show business; yet he continues to be haunted by the loss of his mother when he was a teenager. Scream Therapy has brought some relief, and he reckons that if he could get to his island for three days of solitary screaming into the wind, he might be able to exorcise himself of her ghost for good. But getting to Dorinish proves tricky: saddled, somehow, with the local “fixer” Cornelius O'Grady – a buffoon who spies the press around every corner and insists on putting John in disguises and never taking the straight path from A to B – John despairs he'll never make it to Dorinish. Most of the plot involves this struggle – O'Grady wanting to hide out and accidentally-on-purpose introducing John to his own circle, while John becomes increasingly impatient – and the plot isn't really the point, I suppose. There was plenty of humour in the struggle, John flees to beachy nature and rediscovers his muse, and 80% of the way through, the author himself intrudes to explain why he's writing this book:
I took out a pad and began to make a sketch of the scene. The building itself is a Gotham folly, with dark stones, sombre turrets and an air of bespooked Victoriana, and as I drew I tried to imagine within its occult dreams, and the view across the trees, say on the night of a spring gale, in the soak of an insomniac sweat, as the trees shake out their fearful limbs, and the green shimmers of the treetop faeries move like gasses through the dark. The fact that I am myself tuned to occult frequencies – and frankly I have come to a point in my life where this is no longer deniable – felt like half the battle, but still I had a nagging worry at the edges of my thought, and it was this:
If I was going to make beatlebone everything it should be, I needed to get to the island.
I don't need a paint-by-numbers story arc, but I do need something more than this to happen. As for the small scale writing, there were many perfectly savoury bits that I enjoyed immensely:
•He lies back in his seat, pale and wakeful, chalk-white comedian; his sore bones and age. No peace, no sleep, no meaning. And the sea is out there and moving. He hears it drag on its cables – a slow, rusted swooning. Which is poetical, to a man in the dark hours, in his denim, and lonely – it moves him.
•The sphere of the night turns by its tiny increments. The last of the night swings across its arches and greys. He can do anything he wants to do. He can live in a Spanish castle; he can run with the tides of the moon. He turns his face to settle his cheek on the dirt. He rests for a while. Mars is a dull fire in the eastern sky. He lies for a long calm while until the hills are woken and the birds come to flirt and call and he feels clairvoyant now and newly made. John lies saddled on the warm earth and he listens to its bones.
Beatlebone won the 2015 Goldsmiths Prize (awarded to fiction that "opens up new possibilities for the novel form"), so if one wanted to make the claim that this book's genius simply went over my head, I'd accept that. Still wasn't my cuppa, but I'm happy to have finally read it.
December 28, 2015
Beatlebone is an extraordinary imagining of John Lennon in 1978 by Kevin Barry. It has John attempting to reach his Irish island of Dorinish with his driver Cornelius. The media are there in their hordes to photograph and interview him, and Cornelius takes John on a madcap trip in efforts to avoid them.
The book is a surreal, lyrical and poetic journey into John’s dry spell in songwriting, his current NYC family set up and isolation, Liverpool, love, and his memories about family - mum, dad, aunt etc.. I love the bit where John movingly names this dog he encounters as Brian Wilson. John drips a world weariness that Cornelius shakes vigorously. John finds himself staying with Cornelius, and wearing a suit belonging to the dead father of Cornelius, and entering his persona with fragmented glimpses of his life.
He ends up singing at a pub and then taken to the Amethyst Hotel. Which turns out to be ideal because he has undertaken Primal Scream Therapy previously and this is a private hippy psychedelic ranters hotel owned by Joe Director. John hates his time there and aggressively counters attempts to include him in their activities bar one occasion when some personal accounts come out. My favourite part is where John hides out in a cave and talks to a seal. He glimpses and hears nine perfect tracks for Beatlebone, the album. Nine is a number that resonates throughout.
Kevin Barry adds his experience of researching the Beatles and Lennon and making a similar trip to the island. I found the inclusion of how he came to write this story illuminating whilst adding to the undertones of reading about such a famous figure in music history. John does end up on the island, it is just that the reality of it is too much and he can’t wait to get off. The point of the odyssey was the trip facilitated by Cornelius, not reaching journey’s end.
The story is a poignant, surreal and transitory experience infused with magical insights and imagery. It felt like so much more than reading a book. Attempting to review it is a failure on my part in capturing its essence. That is okay, as this book is so much bigger than that, it covers major life themes in its own inimical fashion. Many grateful thanks to Canongate (the publishers) for a copy of the book via netgalley.
The book is a surreal, lyrical and poetic journey into John’s dry spell in songwriting, his current NYC family set up and isolation, Liverpool, love, and his memories about family - mum, dad, aunt etc.. I love the bit where John movingly names this dog he encounters as Brian Wilson. John drips a world weariness that Cornelius shakes vigorously. John finds himself staying with Cornelius, and wearing a suit belonging to the dead father of Cornelius, and entering his persona with fragmented glimpses of his life.
He ends up singing at a pub and then taken to the Amethyst Hotel. Which turns out to be ideal because he has undertaken Primal Scream Therapy previously and this is a private hippy psychedelic ranters hotel owned by Joe Director. John hates his time there and aggressively counters attempts to include him in their activities bar one occasion when some personal accounts come out. My favourite part is where John hides out in a cave and talks to a seal. He glimpses and hears nine perfect tracks for Beatlebone, the album. Nine is a number that resonates throughout.
Kevin Barry adds his experience of researching the Beatles and Lennon and making a similar trip to the island. I found the inclusion of how he came to write this story illuminating whilst adding to the undertones of reading about such a famous figure in music history. John does end up on the island, it is just that the reality of it is too much and he can’t wait to get off. The point of the odyssey was the trip facilitated by Cornelius, not reaching journey’s end.
The story is a poignant, surreal and transitory experience infused with magical insights and imagery. It felt like so much more than reading a book. Attempting to review it is a failure on my part in capturing its essence. That is okay, as this book is so much bigger than that, it covers major life themes in its own inimical fashion. Many grateful thanks to Canongate (the publishers) for a copy of the book via netgalley.
December 1, 2015
I absolutely loved City of Bohane, with its tensions, character and humour illuminated by beautiful prose and poetic-but-true speech rhythms.
With Beatlebone, it's as if the author thinks we'll love his writing style so much that we don't really need anything else. It didn't work for me. Yes, there is beautiful prose, and poetic-but-true speech - but it wasn't enough. I've seen this book described as a comedy but it didn't make me laugh.
With Beatlebone, it's as if the author thinks we'll love his writing style so much that we don't really need anything else. It didn't work for me. Yes, there is beautiful prose, and poetic-but-true speech - but it wasn't enough. I've seen this book described as a comedy but it didn't make me laugh.
January 25, 2016
First of all this was by no means an easy read, with an almost hallucinatory feel to much of the book - as befitting one written about John Lennon no doubt -and it has kind of an odd structure in that half way through Kevin Barry interjects as himself and explains the back story to the book and the Island. Don’t get me wrong I appreciated the insight and it did help to clarify much of what had gone before and came after, I did puzzle over why that particular piece was where it was though. Why not at the front before we even got started? Although as this isn’t a straightforward book, perhaps that would have been too straightforward- too obvious.
I have to say though, for me, Barry nailed the voice of the thirty-seven year old John Lennon and as he notes, ‘if we can get the voices right, the fiction might hold for a while at least.’ Barry writes that he watched a lot of interviews with the icon before and during the writing process and read some of his writings and of course he is familiar with his music. Having several family members obsessed with the Beatles and Lennon, I not only grew up with their music but watched all the movies, many interviews etc. and Barry captured the sardonic, melancholy, blunt, witty, cheeky voice of John Lennon perfectly –complete with the greatest number of the word ‘f**k’ and its variations I think I’ve ever read in one book!
The character of Cornelius who is trying to get John to his island is another gem and the conversations between he and John had me chuckling on many occasions, again I could perfectly hear the Irish accent in his voice, picture the grimness of the Irish West country and the country towns and pubs. This being Ireland, there had to be an element of mysticism and magic surrounding the two, a melancholy wistfulness to the visions and tirades.
There is some weirdness, some uncomfortable scenes in the Amethyst hotel where you can’t help thinking ‘the 70’s was NUTS’ but again, Barry’s notes on this period helped outline what was going on at the time including the very real process of ‘Scream’ therapy. Most of what he writes about has a basis in history including Johns’ background, the Island, his time out from making music and his comeback album. We are shown a tortured but down to earth genius, caught between the streets of Liverpool and this astonishing fame he achieved, one minute we are laughing when he’s introduced as Cornelius’s myopic cousin Kenneth from the North of England, the next Kevin Barry imagines his anguish at never really knowing his parents.
The island itself remains something of a mystery but then it was always more about the journey than the destination and in Beatlebone Kevin Barry has given us a gut punching, funny, alternately mystifying and enlightening insight into the greatness that was John Lennon.
September 9, 2017
For the past five minutes I have been deleting and re-writing sentences for this review. Sure I can say that this book is great, especially if you are a fan of The Beatles and experimental literature but somehow that does not cut it.
Beatlebone's appeal is by many things. For starters the language used is poetic. Think of short sentences stuffed with puns and Beatles references. Then there's a the plot. John Lennon is visiting one of the islands (in reality he did have an island of his own) he owned in order to get his creative juices running and to escape society. ). The rest of the book is divided into certain set pieces. There's a part in a hotel, another in a pub and the main theme that emerges is that age can change you - in a good or bad way. Throughout the book we get snippets of Lennon's life and need for solitude thus tying up the island as a metaphor thread nicely.
The centrepiece of the book though, is when author Kevin Barry has a section, where he talks about the inspiration behind Beatlebone and his attempt to recreate John Lennon's visits to his private island. Is this meaning that author and character are the same thing but shouldn't be? This is the only part of the book which is written
In all Beatlebone is a brilliant book. DOes it help to be a Beatles fan? yes but don't let it be a detraction.
November 4, 2015
5+ out of 5.
What if John did disappear, sometime in spring 1978, out to his island? He was wont to strike out on his own in those days, to find solace in anonymity as he approached middle-age with a great big writer's block around his neck. What if, in a moldering pile of old film, we could glimpse him pushing the camera away? "Was that John Lennon?!" someone might ask and someone else would say, "What, are you daft?" and it would be forgotten all over again. What if the beatlebone record DID exist, or nearly exist?
The magic of Barry's novel is that it convinces you all of these things might be true. With tremendous wit and even more exceptional heart (and not a little magic, both authorial and literal), he's turned a legend into a man again - something I think Mr. Lennon might appreciate, wherever he is now.
And if you're not reading Kevin Barry, you're making a grave mistake. He is, I think it's safe to say, my favorite author writing today. Beatlebone just continues his streak of delivering the most wonderful kind of joy. I can't wait for you to read it.
More at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2015/11...
What if John did disappear, sometime in spring 1978, out to his island? He was wont to strike out on his own in those days, to find solace in anonymity as he approached middle-age with a great big writer's block around his neck. What if, in a moldering pile of old film, we could glimpse him pushing the camera away? "Was that John Lennon?!" someone might ask and someone else would say, "What, are you daft?" and it would be forgotten all over again. What if the beatlebone record DID exist, or nearly exist?
The magic of Barry's novel is that it convinces you all of these things might be true. With tremendous wit and even more exceptional heart (and not a little magic, both authorial and literal), he's turned a legend into a man again - something I think Mr. Lennon might appreciate, wherever he is now.
And if you're not reading Kevin Barry, you're making a grave mistake. He is, I think it's safe to say, my favorite author writing today. Beatlebone just continues his streak of delivering the most wonderful kind of joy. I can't wait for you to read it.
More at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2015/11...
February 5, 2017
Kevin Barry’s Beatlebone is my book of the year. It’s a riotous romp full of the most unexpected surprises and captivated me from start to finish.
It tells the story of a 37-year-old man named John, who is going through a kind of personal crisis. He wants to spend some much-needed time alone to contemplate his past and figure out his next move. He owns an uninhabited island off the west coast of Ireland, which he’s never visited before, so he decides to spend three days there — alone.
The trouble is, John is no ordinary man — and this is no ordinary adventure. His last name is Lennon, he’s originally from Liverpool and he now lives in New York with his wife and young son. It’s 1978 and he’s petrified that his new-found domestic bliss has stifled — and possibly killed — any shred of artistic creativity he had left after his hey day with the Beatles and his early success as a solo artist.
To read the rest of my review please visit my blog.
It tells the story of a 37-year-old man named John, who is going through a kind of personal crisis. He wants to spend some much-needed time alone to contemplate his past and figure out his next move. He owns an uninhabited island off the west coast of Ireland, which he’s never visited before, so he decides to spend three days there — alone.
The trouble is, John is no ordinary man — and this is no ordinary adventure. His last name is Lennon, he’s originally from Liverpool and he now lives in New York with his wife and young son. It’s 1978 and he’s petrified that his new-found domestic bliss has stifled — and possibly killed — any shred of artistic creativity he had left after his hey day with the Beatles and his early success as a solo artist.
To read the rest of my review please visit my blog.
November 24, 2017
A writerly, phantastic and somewhat 'flowery' approach to Lennon's complex character. Manages to capture John's idiolect beautifully and allows the (younger) reader a glimpse into the very special mindset and vibes of the '70s. Barry also managed (probably all too successfully for his own good) to immerse himself into the inner turmoils and hauntings of his idol. "Off the hinge" is an expression used regularly here to describe mental states - and quite rightly so. One is tempted to call this a very Irish novel indeed.
August 31, 2022
I bought a second-hand copy of this novel simply because I enjoyed the Booker nominated Night Boat to Tangier so much. This book dates from 2015, four years before the Booker Prize nomination. This too has some masterful dialogue and characterisation.
I began reading with no concept of what the book was about, and the Canongate cover gave no clue to who one of the central characters might be. John might have been anyone, but clues begin to emerge (and obviously there is the title) and soon you change the accent in your head from an Irish one to a Liverpudlian. Other editions of the book have a drawing of John Lennon on the cover, so you would be in no doubt who the character was.
John has bought a little island of the west coast of Ireland. All he wants is to be able go there and spend three days alone. What he needs is someone to help him get there unnoticed. Enter Cornelius, whose observations and philosophies on life are priceless. Here, again, is what I loved about Night Boat to Tangier. Two men, eloquently talking shit. Added to that comes amazing descriptive detail and the effect is dazzling. Here is a great example:
There is lots to unpick in this passage. The lack of speech punctuation doesn’t hinder the ability to know when characters are speaking out loud or thinking to themselves. We don’t need the indicators of said A, or said B. And then between two parts of the same sentence we have this amazing description of Cornelius cooking. A bear on castors, and mothering at the same time. So much imagery, sound and smell. The scene comes to life in our heads and our senses pick up the smells and sounds. And then there is the wonderfully condensed ‘Cornelius grins, stretches, rises.’ Four words and the character is already half-way across the room. Brilliant.
Unable to reach John’s island in a small boat for fear of being spotted by the press, an alternative plot is hatched where John will spend a few days in The Amethyst Hotel on the nearby Achill Island. It is run by Sweet Joe and caters for those who need help and have money. Alternative therapies are available. Words are painted on the walls. Again, Cornelius provides us with some priceless description:
One thing that surprised me about this book is that we departed the imagined scenes with John, Cornelius and some of the odd residents of the Amethyst Hotel, stepping out of the novel and into some non-fiction reporting. We jump to a moment in 2011 when the author is outside the Dakota Building in New York where John Lennon was shot. We see a photo of the derelict Amethyst Hotel which he recalls visiting as a child. It was one thing to stretch us to a night that John spent in a cave on the island where he was visited by a talking walrus, but quite another to leave fiction behind entirely. That was the only black mark for me in an entirely brilliant novel.
One word of warning. This is not a book for those who have a problem with swearing and especially use of the ‘F’ word. It reminded me of the wonderful movie In Bruges where an expletive laden rant from Ralph Fiennes’ character leads Colin Farrell to say: ‘Jeez he swears a lot’ in one of the few lines he has that doesn’t contain an ‘F bomb’.
I began reading with no concept of what the book was about, and the Canongate cover gave no clue to who one of the central characters might be. John might have been anyone, but clues begin to emerge (and obviously there is the title) and soon you change the accent in your head from an Irish one to a Liverpudlian. Other editions of the book have a drawing of John Lennon on the cover, so you would be in no doubt who the character was.
John has bought a little island of the west coast of Ireland. All he wants is to be able go there and spend three days alone. What he needs is someone to help him get there unnoticed. Enter Cornelius, whose observations and philosophies on life are priceless. Here, again, is what I loved about Night Boat to Tangier. Two men, eloquently talking shit. Added to that comes amazing descriptive detail and the effect is dazzling. Here is a great example:
Would you be a saddish kind of man, John?
He answers in all the truth he can muster –
As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.
Then what’s wrong with you?
I suppose I’m afraid.
Afraid of what?
That all this happiness is going to rot my fucking brain.
Cornelius grins, stretches, rises.
Would you eat, maybe?
You know I think maybe I would.
Right so.
Cornelius goes to his cupboards and roots out a wheel of black pudding the size of a fat toddler’s arm.
Cornelius?
But he moves with such dainty grace about the kitchen it’s hard to speak against him. Like a small bear on castors he moves. He puts a pan on the stove. He cuts a chunk of lard in. The hot Zs of the sizzle come up to fill the room. He slices up the black pudding and sets the slices on the teeming fat. Watching the routine makes John feel calmer somehow. There is blood and smoke on the air. Cornelius fills the kettle and sets it to boil. He is strangely mothering in his movements. As in men who live alone. He arranges everything neatly and flips the slices of pudding over and John’s mouth cannot but water.
You know I don’t eat this stuff?
Never?
Not for fucking years.
He smiles and sets a place with care and plates the food and serves it with slices of bread cut thickly from the pan and a soft butter spread over.
Now for you, he says.
Jesus Christ, John says.
He eats the food. The spiciness, the mealiness, the animal waft – it’s all there in the history of his mouth, and he is near to fucking tears again. The tea is strong and sweet and tastes of Liverpool.
There is lots to unpick in this passage. The lack of speech punctuation doesn’t hinder the ability to know when characters are speaking out loud or thinking to themselves. We don’t need the indicators of said A, or said B. And then between two parts of the same sentence we have this amazing description of Cornelius cooking. A bear on castors, and mothering at the same time. So much imagery, sound and smell. The scene comes to life in our heads and our senses pick up the smells and sounds. And then there is the wonderfully condensed ‘Cornelius grins, stretches, rises.’ Four words and the character is already half-way across the room. Brilliant.
Unable to reach John’s island in a small boat for fear of being spotted by the press, an alternative plot is hatched where John will spend a few days in The Amethyst Hotel on the nearby Achill Island. It is run by Sweet Joe and caters for those who need help and have money. Alternative therapies are available. Words are painted on the walls. Again, Cornelius provides us with some priceless description:
Now on Achill Island generally, John, you’ll find the people are mean-spirited and small-minded and very aggressive. Tough nuggety foreheads on them. Hard lines to their faces. Tight little mouths. But of course this is no surprise in the wide earthly world…
He spits.
…because they’ve been jawing rocks at the side of the fucken road since the Lord Jesus was a bare-arsed child. We’ll have nothing whatsoever to do with the Achill people, John. That’s a promise to you and faithful. But the people where we���re headed are not Achill by the blood. No indeed. They are your own kind.
One thing that surprised me about this book is that we departed the imagined scenes with John, Cornelius and some of the odd residents of the Amethyst Hotel, stepping out of the novel and into some non-fiction reporting. We jump to a moment in 2011 when the author is outside the Dakota Building in New York where John Lennon was shot. We see a photo of the derelict Amethyst Hotel which he recalls visiting as a child. It was one thing to stretch us to a night that John spent in a cave on the island where he was visited by a talking walrus, but quite another to leave fiction behind entirely. That was the only black mark for me in an entirely brilliant novel.
One word of warning. This is not a book for those who have a problem with swearing and especially use of the ‘F’ word. It reminded me of the wonderful movie In Bruges where an expletive laden rant from Ralph Fiennes’ character leads Colin Farrell to say: ‘Jeez he swears a lot’ in one of the few lines he has that doesn’t contain an ‘F bomb’.
May 7, 2017
Was John Lennon een pionier? Hij kocht in 1967 voor omgerekend € 2000 het eiland Dorinish, voor de westkust van Ierland, en was daarmee één van de eerste beroemdheden die zich eigenaar van een eiland mocht noemen. Het had de plek moeten worden waar John Lennon en zijn vrouw Yoko Ono oud zouden worden. Door de moord op Lennon in 1980 kwam daar niets van terecht. Na zijn dood verkocht Yoko Ono het eiland met flinke winst aan plaatselijke boeren. Nu huizen er grazende schapen en zeevogels.
Kevin Barry's Beatlebone is het verhaal van het fictieve bezoek in 1978 van John Lennon aan zijn eiland. John is de weg kwijt. Zijn kop voelt aan als het centrum van een metropool. John is moe, en niet van slaaptekort. Het begin van een midlife-crisis dient zich aan. Hij is onrustig, ergert zich aan alles ('the radio won't stop playing Kate Bush'). En liedjes schrijven wil ook al niet lukken. John is op de vlucht. Geen persratten. Geen fucking fotografen. En hoe vaak gaan ze hem nog vragen voor de Muppet Show? Drie dagen op zijn eiland, dat is het enige wat hij wil. Onvindbaar zijn. 'To get his mojo back'. Een plek 'to scream his fucking lungs out', elke dag tot de nacht valt. Een knipoog naar de 'primal scream' therapie die John en Yoko volgden bij psycholoog Arthur Janov, die een belangrijke inspiratiebron is geweest voor het album 'John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band' uit 1970.
Maar John is ook letterlijk de weg kwijt. Hij weet niet meer welk eiland van hem is. En tot overmaat van ramp hebben de paparazzi lucht gekregen van zijn aanwezigheid. De Ierse Cornelius O’Grady, zijn taxichauffeur, tevens reisgenoot, mentor en bodyguard snelt hem te hulp en neemt hem op sleeptouw. Een 'magical mystery tour' volgt door het Ierse landschap, met filosofische gesprekken, in een busje dat 'smells of the other Monday’s fish'. Als de twee terechtkomen in een hotel, waar een primal scream-sekte huist, wordt het verhaal gekker en gekker. In dit deel van het boek gaat Barry helemaal los en gaan alle sluizen open. De ellenlange scheldpartijen tussen John, de sekteleden en goeroe Joe - één grote psychedelische trip - zijn soms nauwelijks te volgen. Is Barry hier zelf de weg kwijt?
Dan onderbreekt Barry het verhaal, alsof het genoeg is geweest en richt hij zich rechtreeks tot de lezer. Barry legt uit hoe het idee om Beatlebone te schrijven is geboren en wat hem heeft geïnspireerd. Hij beschrijft zijn eigen reiservaringen in West-Ierland toen hij onderzoek deed voor zijn boek. Hoewel dit hoofdstuk veel vragen beantwoordt en het gedurfd en onconventioneel is om dit epiloog-achtige hoofdstuk middenin het boek op te nemen, haalde het me ook weg uit het verhaal. 32 pagina's later vervolgt Barry het verhaal alsof er niets is gebeurd, waarbij de grote vraag blijft of John Lennon zijn eiland zal bereiken.
Moed kan Barry niet ontzegd worden. Je moet het maar durven om in het hoofd te kruipen van één van de grootste artiesten van de twintigste eeuw en proberen weer te geven wat hij gevoeld moet hebben. En Barry lapt in Beatlebone de ene na de andere schrijfregel aan zijn laars, bijvoorbeeld door veel gebruik te maken van witregels, waardoor het verhaal soms leest als een scenario. Zonder enige twijfel kan Barry schrijven. Hij heeft lang geschaafd aan de stijl. De zinnen zijn poëtisch en betoverend. Het Ierse landschap komt tot leven. De dialogen zijn messcherp en vaak grappig. Als John in het begin van het boek in zijn hotel aankomt wordt hem gevraagd: 'Do you have a reservation?' 'I have severe ones,' antwoordt John, 'but I do need a room.' Maar Barry slaat door in zijn experimenteerdrift. Dat gaat helaas ten koste van het verhaal. In Beatlebone is het verhaal ondergeschikt aan de stijl, het experiment.
Kevin Barry's Beatlebone is het verhaal van het fictieve bezoek in 1978 van John Lennon aan zijn eiland. John is de weg kwijt. Zijn kop voelt aan als het centrum van een metropool. John is moe, en niet van slaaptekort. Het begin van een midlife-crisis dient zich aan. Hij is onrustig, ergert zich aan alles ('the radio won't stop playing Kate Bush'). En liedjes schrijven wil ook al niet lukken. John is op de vlucht. Geen persratten. Geen fucking fotografen. En hoe vaak gaan ze hem nog vragen voor de Muppet Show? Drie dagen op zijn eiland, dat is het enige wat hij wil. Onvindbaar zijn. 'To get his mojo back'. Een plek 'to scream his fucking lungs out', elke dag tot de nacht valt. Een knipoog naar de 'primal scream' therapie die John en Yoko volgden bij psycholoog Arthur Janov, die een belangrijke inspiratiebron is geweest voor het album 'John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band' uit 1970.
Maar John is ook letterlijk de weg kwijt. Hij weet niet meer welk eiland van hem is. En tot overmaat van ramp hebben de paparazzi lucht gekregen van zijn aanwezigheid. De Ierse Cornelius O’Grady, zijn taxichauffeur, tevens reisgenoot, mentor en bodyguard snelt hem te hulp en neemt hem op sleeptouw. Een 'magical mystery tour' volgt door het Ierse landschap, met filosofische gesprekken, in een busje dat 'smells of the other Monday’s fish'. Als de twee terechtkomen in een hotel, waar een primal scream-sekte huist, wordt het verhaal gekker en gekker. In dit deel van het boek gaat Barry helemaal los en gaan alle sluizen open. De ellenlange scheldpartijen tussen John, de sekteleden en goeroe Joe - één grote psychedelische trip - zijn soms nauwelijks te volgen. Is Barry hier zelf de weg kwijt?
Dan onderbreekt Barry het verhaal, alsof het genoeg is geweest en richt hij zich rechtreeks tot de lezer. Barry legt uit hoe het idee om Beatlebone te schrijven is geboren en wat hem heeft geïnspireerd. Hij beschrijft zijn eigen reiservaringen in West-Ierland toen hij onderzoek deed voor zijn boek. Hoewel dit hoofdstuk veel vragen beantwoordt en het gedurfd en onconventioneel is om dit epiloog-achtige hoofdstuk middenin het boek op te nemen, haalde het me ook weg uit het verhaal. 32 pagina's later vervolgt Barry het verhaal alsof er niets is gebeurd, waarbij de grote vraag blijft of John Lennon zijn eiland zal bereiken.
Moed kan Barry niet ontzegd worden. Je moet het maar durven om in het hoofd te kruipen van één van de grootste artiesten van de twintigste eeuw en proberen weer te geven wat hij gevoeld moet hebben. En Barry lapt in Beatlebone de ene na de andere schrijfregel aan zijn laars, bijvoorbeeld door veel gebruik te maken van witregels, waardoor het verhaal soms leest als een scenario. Zonder enige twijfel kan Barry schrijven. Hij heeft lang geschaafd aan de stijl. De zinnen zijn poëtisch en betoverend. Het Ierse landschap komt tot leven. De dialogen zijn messcherp en vaak grappig. Als John in het begin van het boek in zijn hotel aankomt wordt hem gevraagd: 'Do you have a reservation?' 'I have severe ones,' antwoordt John, 'but I do need a room.' Maar Barry slaat door in zijn experimenteerdrift. Dat gaat helaas ten koste van het verhaal. In Beatlebone is het verhaal ondergeschikt aan de stijl, het experiment.
February 18, 2020
He is so many miles from love now and home.
This is the story of his strangest trip.
*
And the season is at its hinge. The moment soon will drop its weight to summer. The river is a rush of voices over its ruts and tunnels into the soft black flesh of the night and woods,
*
And he has been haunted by his own self for such a long while, he has been endlessly fascinated by his own black self this long while—he is aching, he is godhead, he is a right bloody monster—
*
On a sour, lonesome note the air moves through the hollows of the chimney and the house; the old house sighs and breathes. He sits inside this heaving thing, this working lung—how the fuck has he got here, and why?
*
The wind speaks, too, and in urgent whispers. News from far-out? Or from close-in?
*
There are things we can’t describe, he says.
Go on?
What we see around us is only at the ten per cent level, John.
Of?
The reality
And what’s the leftover?
Unseen.
How’d you mean?
Well, he says. The way sometimes you’d walk across a field and a sense of elation would come over you. Are you with me?
Okay…
You’re half risen from the skin. The feet are not touching the stones. The little heart is about to hop out of your chest from sheer fucken joy. And the strange thing about it?
Go on.
That patch of happiness could be floating around the field for the last ten years. Or for the last three hundred and fifty years. Out of love that was had there or a child that was playing or an old friend that was found again after a long time lost. Whatever it was, it caused a great happy feeling and it was left there in the field. You’re after walking into it. And for half a minute you’re lifted and soaring but then you’re out the far side again and back into your own poor stride and woes.
You’d find a sadness just the same?
Or an evil, John. Or a blackness. Or terror, John, or fucken terror, because there’s plenty of terror in the world. Always was and has been.
*
And the season is at its cusp, as if this is the night precisely that spring will give way to summer, as if it is all arranged in advance, at celestial council, and the world soon will throw back its doors and open out its moments.
*
The sense of an ache or a wound just beneath the skin—almost impalpable but always there—is not uncommon as you move through the sobering ruts of your thirties. Psychedelic experimentation, in my own long experience, will tend to deepen or amplify this sense. Earlier, in the maelstrom rush of your twenties, in the campaign to selfhood and determination—in finding out who you are—the ache can lay buried so deeply and so quietly it might seem not to exist, but it comes back, and it has a definite weight—as though it has lain buried on the dark side of each passing moment, just there—and the urge to Scream, I believe, is by no means an unreasonable response to it.
*
We are each so many different versions of ourselves, after all, and the body by the passing hour can be heaven or it can be hell.
This is the story of his strangest trip.
*
And the season is at its hinge. The moment soon will drop its weight to summer. The river is a rush of voices over its ruts and tunnels into the soft black flesh of the night and woods,
*
And he has been haunted by his own self for such a long while, he has been endlessly fascinated by his own black self this long while—he is aching, he is godhead, he is a right bloody monster—
*
On a sour, lonesome note the air moves through the hollows of the chimney and the house; the old house sighs and breathes. He sits inside this heaving thing, this working lung—how the fuck has he got here, and why?
*
The wind speaks, too, and in urgent whispers. News from far-out? Or from close-in?
*
There are things we can’t describe, he says.
Go on?
What we see around us is only at the ten per cent level, John.
Of?
The reality
And what’s the leftover?
Unseen.
How’d you mean?
Well, he says. The way sometimes you’d walk across a field and a sense of elation would come over you. Are you with me?
Okay…
You’re half risen from the skin. The feet are not touching the stones. The little heart is about to hop out of your chest from sheer fucken joy. And the strange thing about it?
Go on.
That patch of happiness could be floating around the field for the last ten years. Or for the last three hundred and fifty years. Out of love that was had there or a child that was playing or an old friend that was found again after a long time lost. Whatever it was, it caused a great happy feeling and it was left there in the field. You’re after walking into it. And for half a minute you’re lifted and soaring but then you’re out the far side again and back into your own poor stride and woes.
You’d find a sadness just the same?
Or an evil, John. Or a blackness. Or terror, John, or fucken terror, because there’s plenty of terror in the world. Always was and has been.
*
And the season is at its cusp, as if this is the night precisely that spring will give way to summer, as if it is all arranged in advance, at celestial council, and the world soon will throw back its doors and open out its moments.
*
The sense of an ache or a wound just beneath the skin—almost impalpable but always there—is not uncommon as you move through the sobering ruts of your thirties. Psychedelic experimentation, in my own long experience, will tend to deepen or amplify this sense. Earlier, in the maelstrom rush of your twenties, in the campaign to selfhood and determination—in finding out who you are—the ache can lay buried so deeply and so quietly it might seem not to exist, but it comes back, and it has a definite weight—as though it has lain buried on the dark side of each passing moment, just there—and the urge to Scream, I believe, is by no means an unreasonable response to it.
*
We are each so many different versions of ourselves, after all, and the body by the passing hour can be heaven or it can be hell.
August 1, 2016
enjoyable hybrid novel/musing on Lennon and an imaginary visit to a real island he bought off the coast of Ireland. Fact and speculation intermingle. Some of it interesting, some not so (wasn't that interested in the fake 'ranting' session in the Amethyst hotel for example; but loved the stuff on Lennon's mother and father meeting and on Lennon in the streets of Liverpool in the 50s). As Corey says a must for any Beatles fan (although not much Beatles stuff in it - most set before and after the band existed). Lots of lover-ly swearing.
October 24, 2020
Ok Novel about John Lennon
John Lennon at 37 is heading out to his island Dornish in Ireland. This novel Imagines what those 3 visits might have been like, especially the third. He buys the island in 1967 and visits briefly with Cynthia and later with Yoko but he spent 3 days there in 1978 with a friend doing scream therapy. The novel is made up of mostly dialogue between a John and his friend. They are amusing quips you might have imagined from John. Sweet but not complete.
John Lennon at 37 is heading out to his island Dornish in Ireland. This novel Imagines what those 3 visits might have been like, especially the third. He buys the island in 1967 and visits briefly with Cynthia and later with Yoko but he spent 3 days there in 1978 with a friend doing scream therapy. The novel is made up of mostly dialogue between a John and his friend. They are amusing quips you might have imagined from John. Sweet but not complete.
August 18, 2024
Lyrical, imaginative, inventive, bold, Beatlebone takes you on a trip and it's definitely a worthy ride albeit wild. One to think about for a long time.
May 31, 2016
Slivers of an Odd Song
I'm not often at a loss as to how to review a book, but this one has me baffled. Not as to quality; this is five-star writing if ever there was. But as to giving a coherent account of what I've been reading…? If this is a novel, it's not shaped by its action, or by interplay of character. Though tied to a very real place, County Mayo in the West of Ireland, it is as hallucinatory as it is real. Though featuring a real person, former Beatle John Lennon in 1978, it has more to do with his inner psyche than with his place in the real world. And though written in short paragraphs of prose, it has the effect of extended verse, having much the same relationship to a regular novel as Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood bears to a regular play. About a genius, it is a wild work of genius itself.
In May of 1978, John Lennon, tormented by four years of creative drought, temporarily leaves his wife and child (Yoko Ono and Sean) in the Dakota Apartments in New York, and flies to Ireland to visit an island he had bought several years before. His driver, Cornelius O'Grady, is a character in his own right, with a blarney that harmonizes with John's own laconic poetry. Much of the novel is simply their dialogue, written in spaced-out lines down the page without quotes or attribution. For the weather on Clew Bay makes the island inaccessible, and meanwhile the press are closing in on the rumors that the great John Lennon is back in Mayo. Their path takes him incognito to an attic room in a poky hotel, to a ceilidh in a local pub, to a commune devoted to an extension of primal scream therapy, to a lonely cave in the cliffs of Achill, and eventually to his own island, Dorinish. Although John is mostly clean and sober at this time, he finds himself talking to animals and seeing visions of black-skirted Victorian women disappearing into the sea. The West of Ireland is a haunted place that exactly matches his own psychic turmoil:
I'm not often at a loss as to how to review a book, but this one has me baffled. Not as to quality; this is five-star writing if ever there was. But as to giving a coherent account of what I've been reading…? If this is a novel, it's not shaped by its action, or by interplay of character. Though tied to a very real place, County Mayo in the West of Ireland, it is as hallucinatory as it is real. Though featuring a real person, former Beatle John Lennon in 1978, it has more to do with his inner psyche than with his place in the real world. And though written in short paragraphs of prose, it has the effect of extended verse, having much the same relationship to a regular novel as Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood bears to a regular play. About a genius, it is a wild work of genius itself.
In May of 1978, John Lennon, tormented by four years of creative drought, temporarily leaves his wife and child (Yoko Ono and Sean) in the Dakota Apartments in New York, and flies to Ireland to visit an island he had bought several years before. His driver, Cornelius O'Grady, is a character in his own right, with a blarney that harmonizes with John's own laconic poetry. Much of the novel is simply their dialogue, written in spaced-out lines down the page without quotes or attribution. For the weather on Clew Bay makes the island inaccessible, and meanwhile the press are closing in on the rumors that the great John Lennon is back in Mayo. Their path takes him incognito to an attic room in a poky hotel, to a ceilidh in a local pub, to a commune devoted to an extension of primal scream therapy, to a lonely cave in the cliffs of Achill, and eventually to his own island, Dorinish. Although John is mostly clean and sober at this time, he finds himself talking to animals and seeing visions of black-skirted Victorian women disappearing into the sea. The West of Ireland is a haunted place that exactly matches his own psychic turmoil:
I am just about the right generation, but cannot say I was truly affected by Beatlemania. Somebody gave me Sergeant Pepper when it came out, and I still remember every song. But other than that, I know only the half dozen greatest hits, and I think I once bought In His Own Write . So I am sure that there are numerous references here that I don't get. But not knowing what I am missing, I simply do not miss it. There is more enough already in the verbal music, and the situation of an artist in a dry spell, a celebrity looking for a second act to a life that he would not be permitted to live out. After five long sections of Irish fancy, Barry in a stroke of sheer brilliance moves forward to 11/11/2011, writing in his own person, in calm normal prose, as he attends a memorial in Central Park for John Lennon's death. The biographical facts about John, combined with Barry's own account of finding a way to create a story of them, build an oasis of sanity in an increasingly wild (and profane) book. By the time we return to the West of Ireland, the story has achieved a ballast that now makes it heartrendingly sad, and heartbreakingly beautiful.
The oars of the boat groan and sing.
The cliffs of Achill rise up ahead.
Paranoia races its sovereign gulls.
Who exactly are these people, Cornelius?
January 23, 2016
I couldn't resist getting this book after hearing the author talk on the radio. The premise on which the book is based and the way it is written is so entirely wacky. John Lennon owned an island off the coast of Western Ireland (fact). He visited it a coupe of times and intended to build a house there (fact). He was into Primal Scream therapy wich was popular at the time in California (fact).
From these facts and from listening to numerous radio interviews with John Lennon, Kevin Barry reconstructs a mythical tale of how John took some time out from the pressures of being a fulltime father in New York and suffering from songwriter's block to try to spend three days alone on his Ireland to Scream. This is a travel book through the Irish landscape, written largely in dialogue based on John's characteristic way of speaking. Kevin Barry is interested on the effect of the place we come from on our character and the influence of landscape and the history of place on the way we feel.
There is a wonderful passage in the middle of the book, where Kevin Barry takes a step back and explains how he came to write the book. I found the dialogue wearing after a while, but this chapter was wonderful.
From these facts and from listening to numerous radio interviews with John Lennon, Kevin Barry reconstructs a mythical tale of how John took some time out from the pressures of being a fulltime father in New York and suffering from songwriter's block to try to spend three days alone on his Ireland to Scream. This is a travel book through the Irish landscape, written largely in dialogue based on John's characteristic way of speaking. Kevin Barry is interested on the effect of the place we come from on our character and the influence of landscape and the history of place on the way we feel.
There is a wonderful passage in the middle of the book, where Kevin Barry takes a step back and explains how he came to write the book. I found the dialogue wearing after a while, but this chapter was wonderful.
September 2, 2017
Picking up this book and looking at the title, I immediately started thinking of the Blur song "Beetlebum." As it turns out, that tune's ethereal, hallucinatory (and Beatlesque) quality was absolutely appropriate for this novel, and I've been walking around singing it for three days straight.
BEATLEBONE is what may be the result if you gather the small handful of genuinely talented Beatles fanfiction writers, give them something weird to smoke, and lock them all in a rural Irish hotel room together. In short, this is one of the strangest novels I have ever read, more like a dream than a story.
Let's ride along with John Lennon as he visits the island of the coast of Ireland that he (really) purchased. Is John hallucinating? Is Kevin Barry? Are you?
BEATLEBONE is what may be the result if you gather the small handful of genuinely talented Beatles fanfiction writers, give them something weird to smoke, and lock them all in a rural Irish hotel room together. In short, this is one of the strangest novels I have ever read, more like a dream than a story.
Let's ride along with John Lennon as he visits the island of the coast of Ireland that he (really) purchased. Is John hallucinating? Is Kevin Barry? Are you?
June 1, 2024
The final book I've read from the Goldsmiths 2015 shortlist, but, relatively to a strong list, one of the weaker in my view, albeit still a worthwhile read.
And not as strong as Barry's previous Impac-winning City of Bohane (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). Ultimately this novel suffers from two issues:
firstly it requires an interest in John Lennon to really appreciate it, and I don't think it does enough to create that interest for anyone who doesn't have it.
secondly, the authorial interjection that occurs part way through, see below, seems artificial.
Beatlebone has its origins in a true story. In 1967 John Lennon bought an island in Clew Bay off the west coast of Ireland, originally with grand designs of building a house there, but he eventually handed over the island to a community of hippies, who themselves abandoned it. Beatlebone imagines "John" (his surname is never mentioned), returning incognito (although the press soon get wind) to the area in 1978, hoping to visit the island and try out primal scream therapy.
He will spend three days alone on the island. That is all he asks. That he might scream his f..... lungs out and scream the days into nights and scream to the stars by night - if stars there are and the stars come through.
What follows is a slightly surreal, supernatural and mildly Kafkesque story as the locals, and in particular the memorable Cornelius, a local fixer, seem to take him on endless diversions and misadventures on the way to the island. And in the meantime we get John's own thoughts, mostly in dialogue with Cornelius, on his Liverpool origins and on artistic creativity.
The novel is largely told in minimally punctuated and sardonic dialogue, for example when John first reaches a hotel in the area:
A hatchet face crone appears on the tip of her witches snout. Looks him and and down. Sour as the other Monday's milk. Double checks his ankles to see if he's got a suitcase hid down there.
Well? she says.
It's about a room, love
She throws an eye up at the clock.
This is a foxy hour to be landing into a hotel, she says.
And in denim, he says.
The reception's air is old and heavy, as in a sick room's, and the clock swings through its gloomy moments.
Do you have a reservation? she says.
I have severe ones, he says, but I do need a room."
Or, towards the end of the novel, in conversation with Cornelius:
"The black swarm of the sea moves its lights like a cocaine palace.
I beg your pardon, John?
It's a lyric, Cornelius. Or at least a note towards one. I'm thinking it all through.
I have you now.
I just let the words come out, really, in a sort of ... blaaah. You know without thinking? It's just a kind of ... bleuurrgh. Without thinking. To get the sub-concious stuff? And then I see if I can get a shape on them.
Is that how it works?
Sometimes. But the imagination is a very weak little bird. It flounders, Cornelius, and it flaps around a bit.
I'd believe it, John. Cocaine I never took.
I'm inclined to think that's a very good idea.
Though I was addicted to cough bottles at one time.
His trip culminated not so much on the island, which is something of a disappointment, but with a spiritual experience in a cave, which inspires him to imagine a new album, the eponymous beatlebone:
It will contain nine f... songs, and it will f... cohere, and it will be the greatest f.... thing he will ever f... do.
Now in the cave he has all of its words and all of its noise and all of its squall.
He sees the broad sweep - he sees the tiny detail. This is the one that will settle every score. This is pure expression of scorched ego and burning soul.
The title comes through with first light. He makes carefully with a finger the letters of the word in the white sand
b e a t l e b o n e.
And the eight part of the novel - there are 9 in all, a number with which the real-life Lennon was obsessed - tells of his rather unsuccessful attempt to record this (fictitious) lost album:
CHARLIE:[the sound engineer] It's going to be a challenging piece of work.
JOHN: They are going to do me up like a f****** kipper, Charlie.
CHARLIE: Well there are no songs. As such. I mean song-type songs. Is the thing of it, John.
JOHN: You thing this is news to me, Mr Haines.
CHARLIE: I'm not saying it necessarily needs song-type songs. As such.
JOHN: There are nine f****** pieces.
CHARLIE: But do they flow? As such?
JOHN: Flow, Charlie. What do you think this is? F****** Supertramp.
To add to the rather non-standard nature of the novel, three quarters of the way through the book there is a 35-page authorial interruption to the story. The narrator - the author or a fictional version of Barry - explains that much of John's experiences are based on his own when he researched the book.
"The idea was that I would get to the island and I would Scream...I imagined that this was going to be an odd, meditative interlude in my life - three days of utter inwardness; an exploration of inner space; a seablown breeze to clear all the webs away - and I would return to report my findings in a mature, honed, prose, as clear as class: this from a man who had never knowingly underfed an adjective."
Except in practice, Barry found the experience (or at least in his account in the novel) more disturbing that he expected, complete with the same visions and cave experience he attributes to John in the novel.
This "how I came to write the novel" section is interesting, but I couldn't help feel that its insertion directly into the novel, temporarily interrupting but not diverting the story, felt artificial versus simply including it as a postscript.
Overall, interesting and worth its place on the Goldsmiths shortlist given the brief of the prize, but there are stronger novels on the list.
And not as strong as Barry's previous Impac-winning City of Bohane (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). Ultimately this novel suffers from two issues:
firstly it requires an interest in John Lennon to really appreciate it, and I don't think it does enough to create that interest for anyone who doesn't have it.
secondly, the authorial interjection that occurs part way through, see below, seems artificial.
Beatlebone has its origins in a true story. In 1967 John Lennon bought an island in Clew Bay off the west coast of Ireland, originally with grand designs of building a house there, but he eventually handed over the island to a community of hippies, who themselves abandoned it. Beatlebone imagines "John" (his surname is never mentioned), returning incognito (although the press soon get wind) to the area in 1978, hoping to visit the island and try out primal scream therapy.
He will spend three days alone on the island. That is all he asks. That he might scream his f..... lungs out and scream the days into nights and scream to the stars by night - if stars there are and the stars come through.
What follows is a slightly surreal, supernatural and mildly Kafkesque story as the locals, and in particular the memorable Cornelius, a local fixer, seem to take him on endless diversions and misadventures on the way to the island. And in the meantime we get John's own thoughts, mostly in dialogue with Cornelius, on his Liverpool origins and on artistic creativity.
The novel is largely told in minimally punctuated and sardonic dialogue, for example when John first reaches a hotel in the area:
A hatchet face crone appears on the tip of her witches snout. Looks him and and down. Sour as the other Monday's milk. Double checks his ankles to see if he's got a suitcase hid down there.
Well? she says.
It's about a room, love
She throws an eye up at the clock.
This is a foxy hour to be landing into a hotel, she says.
And in denim, he says.
The reception's air is old and heavy, as in a sick room's, and the clock swings through its gloomy moments.
Do you have a reservation? she says.
I have severe ones, he says, but I do need a room."
Or, towards the end of the novel, in conversation with Cornelius:
"The black swarm of the sea moves its lights like a cocaine palace.
I beg your pardon, John?
It's a lyric, Cornelius. Or at least a note towards one. I'm thinking it all through.
I have you now.
I just let the words come out, really, in a sort of ... blaaah. You know without thinking? It's just a kind of ... bleuurrgh. Without thinking. To get the sub-concious stuff? And then I see if I can get a shape on them.
Is that how it works?
Sometimes. But the imagination is a very weak little bird. It flounders, Cornelius, and it flaps around a bit.
I'd believe it, John. Cocaine I never took.
I'm inclined to think that's a very good idea.
Though I was addicted to cough bottles at one time.
His trip culminated not so much on the island, which is something of a disappointment, but with a spiritual experience in a cave, which inspires him to imagine a new album, the eponymous beatlebone:
It will contain nine f... songs, and it will f... cohere, and it will be the greatest f.... thing he will ever f... do.
Now in the cave he has all of its words and all of its noise and all of its squall.
He sees the broad sweep - he sees the tiny detail. This is the one that will settle every score. This is pure expression of scorched ego and burning soul.
The title comes through with first light. He makes carefully with a finger the letters of the word in the white sand
b e a t l e b o n e.
And the eight part of the novel - there are 9 in all, a number with which the real-life Lennon was obsessed - tells of his rather unsuccessful attempt to record this (fictitious) lost album:
CHARLIE:[the sound engineer] It's going to be a challenging piece of work.
JOHN: They are going to do me up like a f****** kipper, Charlie.
CHARLIE: Well there are no songs. As such. I mean song-type songs. Is the thing of it, John.
JOHN: You thing this is news to me, Mr Haines.
CHARLIE: I'm not saying it necessarily needs song-type songs. As such.
JOHN: There are nine f****** pieces.
CHARLIE: But do they flow? As such?
JOHN: Flow, Charlie. What do you think this is? F****** Supertramp.
To add to the rather non-standard nature of the novel, three quarters of the way through the book there is a 35-page authorial interruption to the story. The narrator - the author or a fictional version of Barry - explains that much of John's experiences are based on his own when he researched the book.
"The idea was that I would get to the island and I would Scream...I imagined that this was going to be an odd, meditative interlude in my life - three days of utter inwardness; an exploration of inner space; a seablown breeze to clear all the webs away - and I would return to report my findings in a mature, honed, prose, as clear as class: this from a man who had never knowingly underfed an adjective."
Except in practice, Barry found the experience (or at least in his account in the novel) more disturbing that he expected, complete with the same visions and cave experience he attributes to John in the novel.
This "how I came to write the novel" section is interesting, but I couldn't help feel that its insertion directly into the novel, temporarily interrupting but not diverting the story, felt artificial versus simply including it as a postscript.
Overall, interesting and worth its place on the Goldsmiths shortlist given the brief of the prize, but there are stronger novels on the list.
April 25, 2021
Kevin Barry's writing always, always shines. But I found this frustrating, come the end. The first half is an absolute pleasure. It's incredibly funny, engaging, strange but lucid. The humour and tenderness were perfectly blended. The second half is maddening in its structure and absurdity. I just felt it went a bit too far and by the end I didn't really care all that much.
March 17, 2016
I downloaded the e-book of Kevin Barry's "Beatlebone" because I wanted to test my library's e-book platform and it was the only book that came up for the keyword "Beatles" that wasn't already checked out. I figured that as long as I had it for 21 days, I should read it. I did not know that the author is an award-winning Irish writer with a unique style that readers either love or hate. I did both.
The story, what there is of it, concerns a fictional trip by John Lennon in 1978 to the Irish island he owns for the purpose of being someplace isolated where he can practice his primal scream therapy and re-charge his psychic batteries (and maybe fix his writer's block). If there is such a thing as kitchen sink story telling this is it. Parts are in third person, others in first person, there's an essay in the middle about the author's research for the book and a chapter that reads more like a one act play. All from a writer who "had never knowingly underfed an adjective". At times it nearly made me dizzy.
However, once I determined to stick it out I was rewarded with an interesting take on a favorite artist of mine. Barry is telling it as Lennon might have in a train of thought, anything goes manner. It suits the subject and I think Lennon would have approved, though I'm not so sure he would've used the f-bomb quite so often in his speech. For fans of linguistic gymnastics and Beatles speculative fiction.
The story, what there is of it, concerns a fictional trip by John Lennon in 1978 to the Irish island he owns for the purpose of being someplace isolated where he can practice his primal scream therapy and re-charge his psychic batteries (and maybe fix his writer's block). If there is such a thing as kitchen sink story telling this is it. Parts are in third person, others in first person, there's an essay in the middle about the author's research for the book and a chapter that reads more like a one act play. All from a writer who "had never knowingly underfed an adjective". At times it nearly made me dizzy.
However, once I determined to stick it out I was rewarded with an interesting take on a favorite artist of mine. Barry is telling it as Lennon might have in a train of thought, anything goes manner. It suits the subject and I think Lennon would have approved, though I'm not so sure he would've used the f-bomb quite so often in his speech. For fans of linguistic gymnastics and Beatles speculative fiction.
January 19, 2016
There's a particular someone out there who would love this book, and then there's the rest of us-- most of us. Lennon fans are gonna admire how well Barry captured the man's voice, but they're probably not gonna dig his depiction as a whiny, achey, confused sadsack, and depending on what kind of Lennon they like, they're gonna either wish Barry didn't make so many forays into psychedelia (i.e. that he adopted the voice of clear, conscientious "Watching the Wheels" Lennon more often) or they're gonna wish that said psychedelic forays were more colorful and involving (a la the end of "Strawberry Fields Forever"). The people who aren't really Beatle people are gonna wonder why so many words have been spent on a story about, well, a whiny, achey, confused sadsack, even as they admire Barry's inventiveness and real sense of place/places. This is a book that shows insane promise, and often, but it can't sustain its effects for long. The portrait of Lennon is too sad, and the locales he visits too wet and miserable, to really generate the energy we usually associate with the wonderful world of Beatle-people. Which I guess makes the book damn interesting-- it ends up being more about England/Ireland than the Beatles/Lennon-- if enjoyable only part of the time.
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