Days Without End: A Novel
COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD WINNER
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE
"A true leftfield wonder: Days Without End is a violent, superbly lyrical western offering a sweeping vision of America in the making." —Kazuo Ishiguro, Booker Prize-winning author
From the two-time Booker Prize finalist Sebastian Barry, “a master storyteller” (Wall Street Journal) and author of Old God's Time, a powerful chronicle of duty and family set against the American Indian and Civil Wars
Thomas McNulty, aged barely seventeen and having fled the Great Famine in Ireland, signs up for the U.S. Army in the 1850s. With his brother in arms, John Cole, Thomas goes on to fight in the Indian Wars—against the Sioux and the Yurok—and, ultimately, the Civil War. Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, the men find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they see and are complicit in.
Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry’s latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, Days Without End is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten.
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE
"A true leftfield wonder: Days Without End is a violent, superbly lyrical western offering a sweeping vision of America in the making." —Kazuo Ishiguro, Booker Prize-winning author
From the two-time Booker Prize finalist Sebastian Barry, “a master storyteller” (Wall Street Journal) and author of Old God's Time, a powerful chronicle of duty and family set against the American Indian and Civil Wars
Thomas McNulty, aged barely seventeen and having fled the Great Famine in Ireland, signs up for the U.S. Army in the 1850s. With his brother in arms, John Cole, Thomas goes on to fight in the Indian Wars—against the Sioux and the Yurok—and, ultimately, the Civil War. Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, the men find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they see and are complicit in.
Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry’s latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, Days Without End is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten.
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Community Reviews
“Hunger is a sort of fire, a furnace [...] I loved my father when I was a human person formerly. Then he died and I was hungry and then the ship. Then nothing. Then America. Then John Cole. John Cole was my love, all my love.”
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"Caught-His-Horse- First must of gone down into Mexico or Texas raiding because we don't hear nothing about him for a long time. Things just go on. Lot of things in life just like that. I look back over fifty years of life and I wonder where the years went. I guess they went like that, without me noticing much. A man's memory might have only a hundred clear days in it and he has lived thousands. We have our store of days and we spend them like forgetful drunkards. I ain't got no argument with it, just saying it is so."
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"We got boys here from all corners, mostly eastern men but also some of those states that rub up against Canada. We got farmers, coopers, joiners, settlers. Merchants and sutlers that served the Union cause. They all the same citizen now. Harrowed by hunger and ploughed through by sickness. We got splendid examples of dropsy, scurvy, and the pox. We got ailments of the chest, of the bones, of the arse, of the feet, of the eyes, of the face. Bodies painted with ringworm, lice bites, and a million bugs. Men so sick they are dying of death. Strong men to start that are hard to kill. When you got your scrap of food you got to stuff it down your throat quick march or it will be stole. No cards hardly, no music hardly, only silent stubborn suffering. Men lose their sense and they are lucky. Men are shot for wandering over the death line which is just a row of white sticks near the boundary wall. They don't know where they are. Men stand mute and crazy looking in the mouth of tents with long beards and whiskers. Just stand all day for weeks and weeks and then lie all day. The blacks, Johnny Reb just clean hates these boys. Forty lashes on a wounded soul. Just walk up and shoot them in the head. John Cole he starts to speak but I hushing him time after time."
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"When that old ancient Cromwell come to Ireland he said he would leave nothing alive. Said the Irish were vermin and devils. Clean out the country for good people to step into. Make a paradise. Now we make this American paradise I guess. Guess it be strange so many Irish boys doing this work. Ain't that the way of the world. No such item as a virtuous people. "
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"Maybe in my deepest soul I believe my own fakery. I suppose I do. I feel a woman more than I ever felt a man, though I were a fighting man most of my days. Got to be thinking them Indians in dresses shown me the path. Could gird in men's britches and go to war. Just a thing that's in you and you can't gainsay. Maybe I took the fortune of my sister when all those times ago I saw her dead. Still as a scrap of seaweed. Her thin legs sticking out. Her ragged pinny. I had never seen such things nor suspected there could ever be such suffering. That was true and it will always be true. But maybe she crept into me and made a nest. It's like a great solace, like great sacks of gold given. My heart beats slowly I do believe. I guess the why is dark as doom but I am just witness to the state of things. I am easy as a woman, taut as a man. All my limbs is broke as a man, and fixed good as a woman. I lie down with the soul of woman and wake with the same. I don't foresee no time where this ain't true no more."
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"They were fearsome days then. I am allowed to write John Cole and tell him my news and he comes up from Tennessee but as a condemned man they ain't of a mind to let him see me. I am sore sorry about that but at the same time since I carry John Cole inside I reckoned it must not be allowed to make no odds in the long run. I imagined him near me and I imagined I kissed his face. I imagined he said nice things to me and I imagined me saying back I thought he was the best man I ever knowed. I weren't leaving the world without saying one more time I loved John Cole even if he weren't there to hear it."
---
"Caught-His-Horse- First must of gone down into Mexico or Texas raiding because we don't hear nothing about him for a long time. Things just go on. Lot of things in life just like that. I look back over fifty years of life and I wonder where the years went. I guess they went like that, without me noticing much. A man's memory might have only a hundred clear days in it and he has lived thousands. We have our store of days and we spend them like forgetful drunkards. I ain't got no argument with it, just saying it is so."
---
"We got boys here from all corners, mostly eastern men but also some of those states that rub up against Canada. We got farmers, coopers, joiners, settlers. Merchants and sutlers that served the Union cause. They all the same citizen now. Harrowed by hunger and ploughed through by sickness. We got splendid examples of dropsy, scurvy, and the pox. We got ailments of the chest, of the bones, of the arse, of the feet, of the eyes, of the face. Bodies painted with ringworm, lice bites, and a million bugs. Men so sick they are dying of death. Strong men to start that are hard to kill. When you got your scrap of food you got to stuff it down your throat quick march or it will be stole. No cards hardly, no music hardly, only silent stubborn suffering. Men lose their sense and they are lucky. Men are shot for wandering over the death line which is just a row of white sticks near the boundary wall. They don't know where they are. Men stand mute and crazy looking in the mouth of tents with long beards and whiskers. Just stand all day for weeks and weeks and then lie all day. The blacks, Johnny Reb just clean hates these boys. Forty lashes on a wounded soul. Just walk up and shoot them in the head. John Cole he starts to speak but I hushing him time after time."
---
"When that old ancient Cromwell come to Ireland he said he would leave nothing alive. Said the Irish were vermin and devils. Clean out the country for good people to step into. Make a paradise. Now we make this American paradise I guess. Guess it be strange so many Irish boys doing this work. Ain't that the way of the world. No such item as a virtuous people. "
---
"Maybe in my deepest soul I believe my own fakery. I suppose I do. I feel a woman more than I ever felt a man, though I were a fighting man most of my days. Got to be thinking them Indians in dresses shown me the path. Could gird in men's britches and go to war. Just a thing that's in you and you can't gainsay. Maybe I took the fortune of my sister when all those times ago I saw her dead. Still as a scrap of seaweed. Her thin legs sticking out. Her ragged pinny. I had never seen such things nor suspected there could ever be such suffering. That was true and it will always be true. But maybe she crept into me and made a nest. It's like a great solace, like great sacks of gold given. My heart beats slowly I do believe. I guess the why is dark as doom but I am just witness to the state of things. I am easy as a woman, taut as a man. All my limbs is broke as a man, and fixed good as a woman. I lie down with the soul of woman and wake with the same. I don't foresee no time where this ain't true no more."
---
"They were fearsome days then. I am allowed to write John Cole and tell him my news and he comes up from Tennessee but as a condemned man they ain't of a mind to let him see me. I am sore sorry about that but at the same time since I carry John Cole inside I reckoned it must not be allowed to make no odds in the long run. I imagined him near me and I imagined I kissed his face. I imagined he said nice things to me and I imagined me saying back I thought he was the best man I ever knowed. I weren't leaving the world without saying one more time I loved John Cole even if he weren't there to hear it."
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