Description
Jack McNulty is a ‘temporary gentleman’, an Irishman whose commission in the British army in the Second World War was never permanent. In 1957, sitting in his lodgings in Accra, he urgently sets out to write his story. He feels he cannot take one step further, or even hardly a breath, without looking back at all that has befallen him.
He is an ordinary man, both petty and heroic, but he has seen extraordinary things. He has worked and wandered around the world – as a soldier, an engineer, a UN observer – trying to follow his childhood ambition to better himself. And he has had a strange and tumultuous marriage. Mai Kirwan was a great beauty of Sligo in the 1920s, a vivid mind, but an elusive and mysterious figure too. Jack married her, and shared his life with her, but in time she slipped from his grasp.
A heart-breaking portrait of one man’s life – of his demons and his lost love – The Temporary Gentleman is, ultimately, a novel about Jack’s last bid for freedom, from the savage realities of the past and from himself.
Reviews:
‘Loved this. Its clever archaeological structure, its beautiful writing and compelling relationships. The book is narrated by an unlikeable man adrift in Africa who by telling his story and owning his guilt for his sins hopes to become more likeable. Heavy drinking is the root of all the destruction he has sown and the principle victim his wife, Mai. To escape his flailing marriage he enlists in the British army at the outbreak of war, not a popular decision for an Irishman. (Nationalism of many stripes is an ugly destructive current throughout the novel.) Thus, through rank, he earns the status of temporary gentleman, an ironic misnomer if ever there was one. I’ve enjoyed both Barry novels I’ve read but with this one he’s shot up in my estimation to a first rate novelist’ – Goodreads review
Author: Sebastian Barry
Softcover
Condition: Great lightly used vintage condition.
All sales are final / as is