Farewell to old Ireland, the land of my childhood, which now and forever I am obliged to leave. Farewell to the shores where the shamrock is growing. It’s the bright spot of the beauty, the home of the brave. I will think of her valleys, with fond admiration, though never again her green hills will I see
I’m bound for to cross o’er the wild swelling ocean in search of fame, fortune and sweet liberty.
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Prologue (Of review ;->): Blessed was the moment when I bumped into this book. That afternoon in the British council library after an hour long fruitless journey through the maze of book shelves I was frustrated enough to get away with any book which catch my sight next. There on the corner shelf I saw it, Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor. I started having a dialogue with myself. Joseph O’Connor ….ummmm….never heard of him. So what, he has a nice author like ring to his name. The title …it doesn’t seem very innovative but it has a ship so there is bound to be a voyage. Alright I think I can take my chance with this one. Little less I knew then what a great read I was in for.
Author: Joseph O’Connor, born in Dublin in 1963 is mostly known for his first novel Cowboys and Indians which won him a Whitebread prize. Star of the Sea is one of his most recent works and as the word has it, one of his most ambitious projects too.
The Plot:
Monday the eighth day of November, Eighteen Hundred and Forty Seven
Twenty five days at sea remaining.
In the marrow numbing winter of 1847 a ship embarked on a 26 days journey to from Ireland to New York. It was the time of the famous potato famine of Ireland. A time when humanity had lost all its meaning in the then great land of Erin. The only source of income for farmers, the potato had caught a strange disease. The landlords were evicting the farmers for they couldn’t pay the rent. People were dying of hunger. Thousands were homeless and yet they were singing songs, songs of sorrow, songs of hope.
There only hope was to somehow move to America, The promising land. Apart from a Lord and his wife, the Maharaja, The journalist and other esteemed travelers the vessel had another class of passengers too. These were the poor of Erin who sold everything they ever had, to buy a ticket to NY on Star of the Sea. If only they had known that their misfortune is not to leave them that easily.
My take: The story which at first seems like a spicy thriller evolves into a tale which is much richer in content as well as narration. The analysis could be broken roughly into three parts:
A book within a book I don’t know if there is a specific name to this style of story telling when the author use one of the characters as a medium to narrate the story. In this case the author has artfully used a character called Grantly G Dixon, a journalist by profession to be the writer of this book within a book. Dixon is portrayed as a journalist who is waiting for his one chance to prove his worth in fiction writing. What I found remarkable here is the way Connor interweaves his story with that of Dixon’s.
More then a story It is not merely a travelogue. It is not merely a thriller sailing on high seas either. As the story unfolds and reach its climax all the characters interrelates with one another without they realizing it and form a story which speaks volumes about the Ireland of 1847. Apart from the mystery lurking in the background it also comes as a great learning of those times.
Epilogue (of the book ;->) Titled as The Haunted Man, the epilogue of this book is adorned with a strong narration. As an example try this: What happened is one of the reasons they still die today. For the dead do not die in that tormented country, that heartbroken island of incestuous hatreds.
History happens in the first person but is written in the third. That is what makes history a complete useless art
~David Merridith, a character in Star of the Sea
Au-Revoir
Jai