I learned that I like the way Sebastian Barry writes. I am drawn to the Irish voice, the colloquial words, and the utter beauty of his original phrases. I kept wanting to write down the most beautiful words he used, he was writing in poetry, or lyrical terms. I did not know anything about the Irish civil war, and that seemed to me something too hard to bear, as any war is. I suppose our civil war was similar, neighbor against neighbor at times. Barry certainly did a good job interpreting the voices of the dead Irish and their own turmoils. I liked the reference to Fred Astaire, it reminded me of how much my own mother was drawn to his talents on screen. The protagonist, Rosanne thinks that Fred Astaire was a saint.

"On one of those days God created Fred Astaire. Saturday maybe, since that was the day for pictures. When you saw Fred you felt better about everything. He was a cure. He was bottled in the films and all around the earth from Castlebar to Cairo, he healed the halt and the blind. That's the gospel truth. St. Fred. Fred the Redeemer." Now isn't that a beautiful metaphor.