Sebastian Barry is a master of storytelling. His characters fall fully formed from the page as living, breathing creations with all their humanity so beautifully conjured. A Thousand Moons is equally as perfectly written as his other tales but for some reason I found this a harder book to get into than his others. I think this may have been more to do with me and my frame of mind and I am glad I persisted with it but I'm not sure I finished it with a sense of being sated by it.

Irish author Sebastian Barry’s last novel “Days Without End” (2016) won the Costa Book Of The Year and I read it when it made the 2017 Booker longlist. I enjoyed its unlikely coupling of the two main characters and its “adventure tale of battlegrounds, survival and injustices meted out towards the non-white populations of the developing America” but was a little put off by the present-tense narrative. I was fascinated to hear that Barry was to revisit his characters in what is loosely a sequel to its predecessor. This was one of the titles I focused in on as wanting to read in my start of year Looking Back Looking Forward post.
The main character here is Native American Winona. I had highlighted her and the relationship with Thomas McNulty and John Cole, her adoptive parents, as one of the strengths of “Days Without End” so I was looking forward to her (not present tense) narrative. After the years of wandering and adapting to their environment in the first novel the main characters have settled as farm workers in Tennessee. Their world has very much shrunk and the two men do fade into the background a little here becoming supporting characters and that is disappointing.
Winona’s life consists of risking the antipathy of the local town population because of her heritage in her trips to assist the local lawyer. A young man who works in the dry-goods store, Jas Jonski, takes a shine to Winona and that is where her troubles begin. It’s far less of an adventure tale but the need for survival and the suffering of injustice are once again present and Winona is a positively vibrant and complex character, who like her adoptive parents challenges stereotypes.
As one would expect of an artist of Barry’s calibre it is very well written but for me it just seems to simmer along and never really takes off in the way the last novel did. I missed the epic sweep of that book.
It may be because it is a much quieter novel anyway but given these characters and what we have had from them in the past this quietness was surprising and on this reading just a little disappointing.

Following on from 'Days Without End', this novel is told from Winona's point of view. With the end of the American civil war John Cole and Thomas McNulty have left their fighting (and theatrical) days behind them and settled down in Tennessee on Lige Magan's tobacco farm with Winona, their adopted Lakota Indian daughter. Together with freed slaves Tennyson and Rosalee Bouguereau, this odd assembly have formed a family of sorts and work the farm together. Winona is now grown and educated in writing and arithmetic and has a job with a kind and liberal minded lawyer keeping his books. She even has an admirer, Jas Jonski, who she has agreed to marry, although he is not liked by any of her family.

Despite her stable and contented home, life is still harsh for Winona with the farm barely scratching a living, racism rife and violent men released from the army roaming the country. Both Winona and Tennyson are attacked and beaten in incidents where they couldn't identify the attackers, leading to a series of events that erupt in violence and threaten the safety of Winona's existence.

Told with Barry's unique, lyrical and emotive prose, this is a tale of love and hate as Winona seeks justice for herself and Tennyson. She very much values the kindness and fairness of the lawyer Briscoe as well as the love and compassion she receives from Thomas and John and the love they have for each other ("Their love was the first commandment of my world - Thou shalt hope to love like them."). She is also coming to terms with her heritage and what she remembers of life with her mother and their tribe and realises this is an important part of herself. Although written on a less grand scale than 'Days Without Ends', this heartfelt novel gives a fine feel of the troubled times of that particular period of post civil war history and the courage and spirit of its most deprived people.

This is outstandingly good. I thought Days Without End was brilliant; A Thousand Moons is even better, I think.

Told in the first person by Winona, the Lakota Native American girl we met in Days Without End, it is the story of the immediately post-Civil War events in West Tennessee where they have settled on Lige Magan’s farm. Barry conjures the atmosphere of the time as pre-war attitudes to race and slavery begin to re-assert themselves and continues to create fine, believable characters and an enthralling story.

What makes this really special, though, is Winona’s narrative voice. It is a wonderful mix of the lyrical and poetic which she has gained from her education and reading with the slightly rough, idiosyncratic dialect of Tennessee at that time. I found it riveting, both in what she says and how she says it.

This is definitely one of my books of the year so far and one of the best things I have read for some considerable time. Very warmly recommended.

(My thanks to Faber & Faber for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Sebastian Barry’s 2016 novel, Days Without End, would, without any doubt, stand very high in any top 10 list of all time reads I might ever be asked to compile. I have said it before and I am willing to say it again, I think that book is word perfect. His most recent novel, A Thousand Moons, continues the story of John Cole, Thomas McNulty and their adoptive daughter, Winona, who are still living and working on the farmstead owned by Lige Magan, alongside freedmen, brother and sister, Rosalee and Tennyson Bouguereau.

Each in their own way harbours an identity which is an anathema to the majority of those in their community.  John and Thomas are homosexual, Rosalee and Tennyson are black and Winona is a Lakota Indian. And, of course, in the previous novel they were all involved in the killing (in self defence) of Tach Petrie, hardly an upstanding member of the local fraternity, but certainly a power in it.

While the previous novel focused primarily on John and Thomas, this book centres itself around Winona. Having been taught to both read and write and to figure her numbers by Mrs Neale, Winona is able to find work with Lawyer Briscoe in the local town. Although she finds the job fulfilling and the money that it brings in is much needed, her position calls her to the attention of those who have an in-bred contempt for her and her people. One young man, however, Jas Jonski, is seriously attracted to her and pays court to the point of seeing himself as her fiancé. For her part, Winona goes along with this until one disastrous evening, the events of which leave her both physically and psychologically damaged. From this point on, not only Winona but her entire family are threatened by the consequences of that one night, and the challenge that their way of life is seen as posing to the local community means that they and all those who offer support become vulnerable to smalltown vigilantes.

While the plot of this book is engrossing and marches on apace, like all Barry’s work it is about so much more than simply the events that take place. Chief of these, perhaps, is the question of identity. Although she is deeply embedded in the family unit centred on John Cole and Thomas McNulty, Winona is at all times conscious of the fact that the life she is living compromises the identity into which she was born. Much as he loves her it is Thomas who begins this process by changing her name.

I am Winona.

In early times I was Ojinjintka, which means rose. Thomas McNulty tried very hard to say this name, but he failed, and so he gave me my dead cousin‘s name because it was easier in his mouth. Winona means first-born. I was not first-born.
If one’s name is essential to one’s identity, then so to is one’s language. Returned temporarily to her people Winona discovers that she

couldn’t conversed with them. I remember sitting in the teepee with the other women and not being able to answer them. By that time I was all of thirteen or so. After a few days I found the words again. The women rushed forward and embraced me as though I had only just arrived to them that very moment. Only when I spoke our language could they really see me.
This isn’t only true when she returns to her original home, but has its parallel in Tennessee.

To present yourself in a dry goods store to buy items you have got to have the best English or something else happens.
Throughout the course of the novel, Winona discovers more and more about who she essentially is, until at the end, despite being in the direst of situations she takes her future into her own hands and forbids the rest of her ‘family’ from coming to her aid.

If identity is one of these books major themes, then the concept of time is another, especially as it is viewed by different cultures. This is very much influences the way that people see the relationship between themselves and eternity. Winona speaks of “the whiteman’s strict straight line” through life to the end. Whereas for the Lakota there is no past, present, or future

time was a kind of hoop or circle...if you walk far enough...you could find the people who had lived in the long ago.
How you envisage time, and the end of your time here on earth, inevitably affects how you see yourself, your identity, your relationship to the people and events around you.

And the book is also about the concept of justice and how justice relates to truth. Justice and truth are poor bedfellows in the Tennessee of the 1870s. There is little hope of justice for those who are in anyway seen as different.

You only had to look like you done something wrong in America and they would hang you, if you were poor.
To that you can add if you were black, homosexual, or from any of the first nation races.

A Thousand Moons is a superb piece of writing.  There is almost no limit to the number of beautifully expressed passages that I could quote as an example of this; one will have to suffice.

The land was trying to loosen itself from the royal heat of summer.
If I wasn’t as overwhelmed by it as I was by Days Without End then that is probably because I wasn’t as engaged by Winona as I was by Thomas and John in the previous novel. However, I’m sure that for many readers the opposite will be true. I can’t recommend it strongly enough, my only caveat being that if you haven’t read the earlier book you really do need to do so in order to place the characters and what happens to them in a complete perspective.

With thanks to Faber & Faber and NetGalley for a review copy of this novel.

A sequel to Days without End, this new novel from Sebastian Barry continues with the story of Irish emigrants to the American West, Thomas McNulty and his partner John Cole. The action has moved on to the 1870s and this time the story is narrated by Winona, the Native American girl they adopted in the previous book. Winona is now a young woman and the “family” have settled down on a tobacco farm in Tennessee. Winona is clever, educated and has a job with an unusually, for the time, unprejudiced lawyer, Briscoe, who is working for reconstruction after the Civil War and the American Indian Wars. Against a background of continuing racial tension and violence, the happy household finds itself threatened by events beyond its control. I enjoyed this book much more than Days without End, which just didn’t quite work for me. Here I found Winona’s voice more compelling and convincing than McNulty’s in the earlier book and the storyline itself more convincing. Some aspects of the plot felt too contrived, and in one instance, to do with Winona later in the book, unnecessary and seemingly tacked on. But overall it’s an absorbing tale of a group of unusual and original characters bringing life to an almost too familiar setting which draws the reader in right from the start.

Had no idea this was a sequel but at any rate it didn't do much for me. Slow, almost non-existent plot, weak writing, dull dialogue - this novel did nothing for me. Very unimpressive writer this Sebastian Barry.

Sebastian Barry's previous novel caught me by surprise. I wasn't expecting to like Days Without End so much, but its tale of love and war on the American plains really stirred my emotions. I was more than eager to read the sequel.

A Thousand Moons is narrated by Winona, the Native American girl adopted by John Cole and Thomas McNulty in the earlier story. She lives with the couple and the Bouguereau siblings on the Tennessee farm of Lige Magan, making an unconventional but happy family. Things change when Jas Jonski, a local shop clerk, declares his love for Winona and intentions to marry her. She is initially excited and flattered, but a vicious assault knocks her sideways. Winona is so discombobulated that she cannot remember the exact details of the attack. However, she has an inclination that Jonski was involved. Then her friend Tennyson Bouguereau, an ex-slave, is beaten in an unprovoked assault. She rides out with the Freedmen militia to avenge these crimes and ends up with a lot more than she bargained for.

There are some truly beautiful sentences in this book. Like how Winona describes Thomas McNulty's rare temper, a man that has lived through the horror of the Civil War:
"The rage of Thomas McNulty was very simple. It happened seldom but when it did it was like the anger of righteous angels. He knew the absolute menace of the world. He knew it was a place so knotted with evil that good could only hope to unknot a few tiny threads of it."

Or when she seeks the counsel of John Cole on a difficult, delicate matter:
"He said nothing for a long while. He was struggling to surface from a deep deep pool of difficulty. Then his face opened again like that spot in the woods touched suddenly by stray sunlight."

Winona is eternally grateful to have people like Thomas and John Cole in her life, and prays that one day she will know a love like theirs:
"Where John Cole abided, there was to be found Thomas with his simple heart. Their love was the first commandment of my world - Thou shalt hope to love like them. We have all to meet many souls and hearts along the way - we are obliged to - we must pray we can encounter one or two Thomases and John Coles on that journey. Then we can say life was worth the living and love was worth the gamble."

All that being said, I believe that A Thousand Moons isn't quite as compelling as Days Without End. Winona's jumbled recollection of events doesn't help things, and I found myself a little frustrated at her muddy account. I did enjoy the period detail and the convincing Reconstruction-era setting that Sebastian Barry depicts. But where the novel really succeeds is in its portrayal of love - the electric attraction, the intoxicating rush of it, how important it is to cling on for dear life when you find that precious spark. The kind of connection we all dream about, and one that some of us are lucky enough to attain.

Sebastian Barry’s ‘A Thousand Moons’ follows on from his stunning ‘Days Without End’ and, as both titles suggest, he continues to suggest that there is no end either to mankind’s capacity for love or for hate. Set in Tennessee during the turbulent 1870s, Barry reminds us of the importance of family – not in the blood sense here - and in the strength in belonging. At Lige Magan’s farm, the family is certainly unusual, comprising the gay ex-military couple Thomas McNulty and John Cole, their ‘adopted’ daughter Winona and freed slaves Tennyson and Rosalee Bouguereau.
Told from Winona’s viewpoint, Barry explores just how tough it is to be a young woman whom few respect. At the beginning of the tale, Winona is engaged to be married to Jas Jonski, a local boy not much liked by the rest of the family. All this changes abruptly when she returns to the farmhouse one evening, raped and almost catatonic. After that, she wants no more to do with her fiancé, even though she doesn’t believe that he was her attacker. However, he finds it difficult to accept her rejection – after all, isn’t he a white boy conferring a great honour on a mere Indian girl?
Over the course of the novel, Winona learns that ‘you have to meet the great force of the flood, or the tornado, or the great storm, with an equal great force.’ She takes courage from memories of her mother, the examples of her loving parents, Thomas and John, and the energy of her new friend Peg as she stands up to the injustices strewn in her path.
A novel that declares ‘That there was no place to stand on the earth that was not perilous was just the news of every moment.’ might be described as a gloomy read. However, ‘A Thousand Moons’ is inspiring and uplifting, not least because in unimaginably grim times for a Lakota girl, Winona takes courage from the unwavering love of those who have given her a home. As ever, Barry’s style of writing captures the character of the tough, rural community, its love of the natural world and its tenacious spirit. A fitting sequel to ‘Days Without End’, this novel celebrates women’s courage, determination and devotion.
My thanks to NetGalley and Faber & Faber for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

I usually love Sebastian Barry’s books, but his last one – Days Without End – was the first one I’ve read that I haven’t particularly enjoyed. Ironically, it also seems to be one of his most popular and successful books! When I saw that he had written a sequel, I wasn’t sure whether to read it, but as it promised to tell the story of Winona, the one character from Days Without End who did interest me, I thought I would try it – and I’m pleased to say that I was able to connect with this book in a way that I didn’t with the previous one.

Those of you who have read Days Without End will probably remember that Winona was the Lakota orphan rescued by Thomas McNulty and John Cole. In A Thousand Moons, set in the 1870s, we discover that Winona, now a young woman, is still living with Thomas and John on Lige Magan’s tobacco farm in Tennessee. Despite the love and support she receives from the men who have adopted her and the opportunities she has been given – including a job in a lawyer’s office – Winona is aware that she has still not been fully accepted by the wider community and that most people see her as ‘nothing but an Injun’ whose life is worth less than that of a white person.

Near the beginning of the novel we learn that Winona has been raped and the blame has fallen on Jas Jonski, a young Polish immigrant who swears he loves Winona and wants to marry her. Winona herself has no memory of the incident, something which distresses her as she has no idea whether Jonski is being wrongly accused or not. At around the same time, Tennyson Bouguereau, a former slave living on the farm, is also attacked and violently beaten – and again, it is not clear who the culprits are. The rest of the book, narrated by Winona herself, describes how she slowly uncovers the truth of her own assault and Tennyson’s.

I’m not sure why I liked this book so much more than Days Without End. Both books are beautifully written, as I have come to expect from Sebastian Barry, and obviously they feature some of the same characters and have a similar setting. I think the difference is that the first book, which was narrated by Thomas McNulty, was more of a ‘western’ with a focus on things like life in the army, shooting buffalo and fighting the Sioux. This book, in contrast, is more domestic, concerned with how the characters are getting on with their daily lives in the aftermath of the recent Civil War and how they are coping with the racial tensions left unresolved within their society. That, and the fact that I felt a stronger emotional connection with Winona than I did with Thomas, are the only reasons I can think of for my very different reactions to the two novels.

I also loved all the little insights Winona gives us into her early childhood with the Lakota tribe and what she remembers of their culture, traditions and stories, including her mother’s belief that ‘If you walked far enough, you could find the people still living who had lived in the long ago. A thousand moons all at once.’

Thanks to Faber and Faber and to NetGalley for offering me an ARC copy of this book, which I freely chose to review.
I read Barry’s Days Without End, loved it (you can read my review here) and couldn’t resist when I saw his next novel was available. This story follows on from the previous one, and it shares quite a few characteristics with that one. Although I’ve read some reviews by people who hadn’t read the previous novel and said that they felt this one could be read on its own, I wouldn’t dare to comment on that. Personally, because the story follows closely on from Days Without End, and it refers to many of the characters we had got to know there, I’d recommend readers thinking about taking up this series to start by reading the previous novel.
This story, like Barry’s previous book, is a historical novel, in this case set in Tennessee shortly after the American Civil War. In the previous novel we followed two characters, Thomas McNulty (the first person narrator) and John Cole, through their adventures as actors, Indian hunters and soldiers, and learned that they had adopted a young Lakota girl, Ojinjintka, renamed Winona; in this second book we hear the story from Winona’s point of view. The couple of men have settled down now, and the fact that this is not only a woman’s story, but the story of a Native-American woman, means that her ambit of action is much more restricted and despite her efforts to take control of her own life, she’s often at the mercy of laws and circumstances that consider her less than a human being. Although she is loved by her adoptive parents and the rest of the extended family she lives with, that is not a general state of affairs, and if life had treated her badly as a child, she also suffers a major traumatic event here, as a young woman. No matter that she is educated (she keeps the books for a lawyer in town), strong-willed, and determined. She is either invisible (just an Indian girl) or a creature to be abused, vilified, and made to take the blame for other’s crimes. That does not mean what happens to her does not reflect the events in the larger society (we do hear about racism, about lynching, about corruption of the law, about Southern resistance…), but we get to see them from an “other” point of view, and it creates a sense of estrangement, which I suspect is intended by the author. While Thomas and John were outsiders themselves and always lived in the fringes of society, Winona’s position is more precarious still.
I have mentioned some of the themes of the novel, and others, like family relationships, race, gender, identity (Winona remembers a lot about her life as a Lakota, and the memories of her mother in particular bring her much comfort and strength), and the lot of women also play an important part in the novel. There is also something of a mystery running through it, as there are a couple of crimes committed early on (one a severe beating of an ex-slave living with Winona’s family in the farm, and the other one her assault) and Winona spends much of the novel trying to clarify what happened and to get justice, one way or another, as the authorities are not going to intervene because neither of them are important enough. Although she turns into something of an amateur detective, this is no cozy mystery or a light adventure novel, and there are plenty of harrowing moments in it, so I wouldn’t recommend it to people who are looking for cheerful entertainment.
The characters are as fascinating as those from the previous novel, although we get to see them from a totally different point of view. It Thomas was the guiding consciousness of Days Without End, Winona’s voice (in the first person) narrates this fragment of the story. We get to see things from her perspective, and that also offers us an opportunity to reevaluate our opinion of the characters we already knew. We also meet some new characters, but because of Winona’s status (or lack of it), we are put in a difficult position, always feeling suspicious and expecting the worst from those we meet, because she has no rights, both because she is a woman and because she is an Indian woman. Her voice takes some time to get used to. She has been educated, but a bit like happened with Thomas in the previous novel, her speech and thoughts are a mixture of vernacular expressions and lyrical images. She is sometimes confused and can’t make sense of what is happening around her, and at others can show a great deal of insight. When she reports the dialogue and words of others —although she is quite an astute observer of others’ behaviour —, all the people she mentions talk pretty much the same, no matter how educated they are, and farm-hands and judges cannot be told apart from the way they speak. Although I felt for Winona at an intellectual level and was horrified by the things she had to go through, perhaps because of the estrangement I mentioned and of the style of the narrative, I didn’t find it as easy to connect at an emotional level. I liked her and I loved her insights and some of her comments, but I didn’t feel as close to her as I did to Thomas in the first book.
The writing is beautiful and poetic at times, while at others it can be difficult to understand due to the mental state of the character and to her peculiar style. It reminded me of the stream-of-consciousness narration typical of modernist writers in the early years of the XX century. Winona’s thoughts jump from one subject to the next, and although the story is told in chronological order, memories of her time with the Lakotas and flashbacks from her trauma keep interfering in the narrative. This is not a particularly fast novel or a page turner in the traditional sense, as it meanders along, with exciting and horrifying scenes intermixed with scenes of domesticity and everyday life. I confess to having to go back and forth at times to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, but it was worth it.
I highlighted many parts of the novel, but I’ll share a few samples (note that this is an ARC copy, so there might be some changes in the published version):
I wonder what does it mean when another people judge you to be worth so little you were only to be killed? How our pride in everything was crushed so small it disappeared until it was just specks of things floating away on the wind.
You can’t be a geyser of tears all your life.
‘She got to have some recompense in law,’ said Lige Magan. ‘An Indian ain’t a citizen and the law don’t apply in the same way,’ said the lawyer Briscoe.
Only a woman knows how to live I believe because a man is too hasty, too half-cocked, mostly. That half-cocked gun hurts at random. But in my men I found fierce womanliness living. What a forturne. What a great heap of proper riches.
I’ve seen some reviews who felt the ending was disappointing or unbelievable. I’d have to agree that there is something of the Deus ex machina about the ending, but overall I liked where the story ended and would like to know what happens next to Winona, to Peg (one of my favourite new characters), and to the rest of the characters.
Would I recommend the novel? It is a fascinating book, and one lovers of Barry will enjoy. I advise anybody interested in this historical period and eager to read this author’s work to start with the previous novel, as I found the style of this one more challenging and more difficult to follow, and having an understanding of the background of the characters helps put it into perspective. As I usually do, I’d recommend readers to check a sample of the novel before deciding to purchase it, but give it a good chance, as it does take some time to get used to the style, and the story is well-worth reading and persevering with. I will definitely be looking forward to the next novel.

DNF @20%. The sequel to Sebastian Barry's Days Without End, A Thousand Moons is set in West Tennessee shortly after the American Civil War and narrated by Winona, the Native American girl adopted by Thomas and John during the course of the last novel. The novel begins with Winona being brutally attacked and raped, and she, alongside her various protectors, set out to see who is involved. Barry can absolutely write, but I didn't find Winona's voice nearly as engaging or convincing as Thomas's in Days Without End, and I also kept feeling that I'd read this all somewhere before. I feel like I didn't give this novel much of a shot, but also that now isn't the time to press on with books that aren't pulling you in. In recognition of this, I have not rated it publicly.

My thanks to Faber & Faber for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘A Thousand Moons’ by Sebastian Barry in exchange for an honest review.

This is a sequel to his award winning ‘Days Without End’ and is told from the perspective of Winona, the orphaned Lakota girl adopted by former soldiers Thomas McNulty and John Cole in that novel.

I do feel it is best to read ‘Days’ first, not only because it is a beautifully written novel that captures the rawness of the West in the mid-1800s, but in order to appreciate the relationships between the characters and their tumultuous journey before settling down on Lige Magan’s tobacco farm in Tennessee, along with two freed slaves, Rosalee and her brother Tennyson.

Winona has received an education and is now working as a clerk for the lawyer Briscoe in the nearby town of Paris. Yet a shocking traumatic event threatens the life that she and the others have created.No further details to avoid spoilers.

Barry’s lyrical prose provides a unique voice for Winona that is very down to earth and draws on the heritage passed on during her early years with her people. Yet at times she wonders “how much of me now was still Lakota”.

This is a powerful, deeply moving story that builds upon the narrative of ‘Days Without End’. Two very important works of historical fiction.

Very highly recommended.

Thank you to Netgalley and F&F for this advanced reader's copy in return for my honest review. The idea of this book intrigued me, I love historical fiction. The book is filled with dark themes such as violence, rape and racism and is evocative of the mood of the post civil war era.

A Thousand Moons follows the tale of Winona, who we first met in Days Without End. We revisit the same friends for a heartfelt and beautiful tale of extended family, friendship and loyalty. I hugely enjoyed this book. The prose is mesmerising and the cadence sweeps you along.

It’s difficult to be objective as to how it would work as a stand alone but I certainly think read as a duo (in the correct order) it is both a treat and a pleasure.

I can only hope that part 3 brings returns to Paris via Lawyer Briscoe.

With thanks to Faber and Faber and Netgalley for an advance copy in consideration of an honest review.

Winona is a young Lakota girl orphaned in the brutal conflict of the American Civil War.

Rescued by retired soldiers Thomas McNulty and John Cox, she finds a world outside their farm which has no respect for her and indeed in the eyes of the law she barely exists.

Although brutal and in humane in parts, Barry leaves much to the reader to interpret. I found myself immersed in Winola’s character, reading in her accented English and feeling her pain at the lack of justice and equality.

This is the second book in the Days without End series.

A true gift of a book

A Thousand Moons is the excellent follow up to Days Without End, this time focusing on ‘winona’, the adopted daughter of Thomas McNulty and John Cole, rescued from the slaughter of Lakota Indians in the previous book,. Told from the perspective of Winona, this is at times a harrowing depiction of growing up as someone (or even something) regarded as lowest of the low in post Civil War Tennessee- a Lakota Indian, a woman, being raised by two men... The perspective this brings to the view of a state in no way at peace after the war is fascinating and moving, with the violent tensions, misogyny and racism all on show.

An unfair criticism - i fell in love with the characters of Thomas McNulty and John Cole in the previous book, and seeing them through the eyes of their daughter doesn’t give the same access to their story and feelings. I’d like to have seen that book as well, but that wouldn’t set aside the stark lyrical beauty of A Thousand Moons.

I really enjoyed this book although I found the author's writing style a bit challenging at times.

In the aftermath of the war, this is a story is about Winona a vulnerable young Indian woman growing up on a farm in/around 1870 in Tennessee where racism is at its peak. She is living in poverty with her adoptive parents. The story centres around Winona who is brutally beaten up and raped and the emotional and physical effect it had on her and her family while they struggle to deal with the consequences coupled with the fact that Winona can't really recall much about the incident.

The storyline is harrowing but also moving and enjoyable. The author is excellent at character portrayal and drawing you in so much so that you feel like you are there.

Thank you to Netgalley, Sebastian Barry and Faber and Faber for the ARC.

A Thousand Moons is the sequel to Days Without End, which really should be read first, not just for completeness but to revel in its fierce, breathtaking prose.

A Thousand Moons follows the fortunes of Winona, the Lakota girl orphaned as a result of Thomas McNulty and John Cole’s actions while soldiers. The narrative of the book is related by her. All of them are leading a settled life on a farm the men are working on, with Winona now well educated and beginning to make her way in the world. Until a traumatic event threatens to destabilise Winona’s life once again.

Sebastian Barry uses a no frills, matter of fact approach to his storytelling, creating a very intimate experience for the reader. There is always a danger of a writer poorly appropriating a culture they are not a part of, particularly when it is set in a historical context and related in a way the writer assumes the story would have been told. However, Winona’s tone and plain language completely captures her essence, drawing the reader right into her very soul, which is troubled but pure.

Most telling is the trauma Winona undergoes in this relation of her life. Rather than drag this out through a detailed and harrowing account, Barry chooses a much more effective way of bringing home the horror of her experience and the devastating effect to her psyche. He does this through her reactions and actions, as well as exploring the love and acts of compassion exuded by those around Winona, who nurture and care for her.

This method of allowing the reader to fill in the gaps and concentrate on what is there in its place, provides the narrative with a lightness of touch and delicately balanced storytelling. Along with and incredible lyrical style, Barry’s stories make for an immersive and affective type of reading experience and is why the reader will not worry one bit if the plot on occasions might appear a little contrived, because this is a vast emotional canvas told on an intimate scale.

I have the audiobook of Days Without End, just to be able to sit back with another way of experiencing Barry’s gorgeous prose and relish the words swirling around me. There is no doubt I will do the same with A Thousand Moons when it becomes available. They are two books of which I will never tire, finding that each reading brings something new to the feast of words.

A strong successor to the sublime Days Without End , A Thousand Moons takes up from where that book finishes, on the farm in Tennessee where Winona, a young Lakota Indian is living with her somewhat unusual adoptive family, Thomas McNulty and John Cole on the Magan farm with it's owner Liege, and two freed slaves. While it is not essential to have read Days Without End to enjoy this book , it will certainly add an extra layer to the enjoyment, and it is in itself a wonderful book.
This book focuses on Winona and her story, and it was interesting to see things from her perspective, especially what she remembered from her time with her tribe before they were massacred , which was much more than was suggested in the previous book which was told from the perspective of Thomas. In fact one of the most interesting and skilfully handled aspects of the book was the shift in narrator which gave the reader a new perspective on what could have seemed too familiar.
Life in Tennessee after the Civil War is not easy for anyone , the divided loyalties of the state still flares up into tension from time to time, and being a person of colour carries an extra risk, one that Winona is only too aware of. As an Indian she is regarded as less than human, someone who can be attacked or beaten with little fear of legal consequences, so when she returns home one night beaten and bloody , her adoptive fathers want to seek out the culprit and render some frontier justice of their own. The most likely culprit is a young store clerk who came courting her but Winona says she cannot remember what happened and just wants to forget it. Ultimately in order to move forward and enjoy the comfort and happiness she finds in a most unlikely source, she will have to confront the issues from her past.
Once again Barry's beautiful lyrical prose is a highlight, at times it is almost poetic. Once the reader gets used to Winona's cadences and speech patterns it becomes smooth,but early on the first person narration felt a little jarring and cumbersome. Getting a different perspective on familiar characters is always interesting, and once again we see that people are rarely good or evil, they often live in the shades of grey in between.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.