At a time when so much new Irish fiction has adopted a tone of aggressive comedy, Barry's gentle tale about one of life's innocents doomed to an existence of perpetual wandering stands out as something strange, surreal and even offbeat. As is to be expected from Barry, his artistic vision is shaped by his fascination with history and the idea that an epic does not neccessarily have to be about public happenings. With its stylistic and thematic echoes of his previous novel The Engine of Owl-Light (1986), this novel manages to be both dream-like and earthbound. Eneas is battered as much by history unfolding as he is by bad luck and poor timing. He lives in his imagination as much as in a world of brutal confusions. Yet for all its beauty, Barry's passive, airy novel, which flows and eddies like water, somehow fails to engage the emotions.
