1AnnieMod
Sebastian Barry is an Irish novelist, playwright and poet, born in 1955.
He is the first novelist to win the Costa Book of the Year award twice: the 2008 prize for The Secret Scripture (apparently despite the judges disliking the ending) and the 2016 one for Days Without End. Both novels are part of the loosely connected McNulty Family series.
He is a new author for me so not sure yet what I plan to read. What are your plans?
He is the first novelist to win the Costa Book of the Year award twice: the 2008 prize for The Secret Scripture (apparently despite the judges disliking the ending) and the 2016 one for Days Without End. Both novels are part of the loosely connected McNulty Family series.
He is a new author for me so not sure yet what I plan to read. What are your plans?
2MissWatson
I have got Days without end standing by. His books are a bit hard to find here in Germany, but I'm still looking.
3marell
I have read two books by Sebastian Barry, A Temporary Gentleman and Days Without End. I’ve chosen to read A Long, Long Way this time. Sorry, touchstones are incorrect here for this title.
4AnnieMod
>3 marell: Look next to the incorrect touchstone on the right of the message (or under it on mobile). There is a link that says “others”. Click on it and find the correct title. The site just cannot always know which of many same/similarly named books you want. :)
5dianelouise100
Sebastian Barry will be a new author for me, also. I’m thinking of getting The Secret Scripture from the library soon, book description sounds very interesting.
6marell
>4 AnnieMod: Thank you! And thank you for your hard work on behalf of the group.
7BookConcierge
I loved Days Without End and would like to read his "sequel" A Thousand Moons.
8dianeham
I’ve read Days Without End, The Secret Scripture and The Temporary Gentleman. I think I’ll read A Long, Long Way which was shortlisted for the Booker in 2005.
9dianelouise100
I started The Secret Scripture last night and am finding it moves along pretty quickly. So far, a good story line and very interesting characters.
10dianeham
I got A Long Long Way from the library today. I don’t think I’m going to stick with it. The main character signed up for the army and is fighting for England in WWI. I really don’t want to read about war.
11dianeham
I’m reading On Blueberry Hill - a play by Sebastian Barry.
12dianelouise100
Finished The Secret Scripture and really loved it. I found it so moving from beginning to end! I thought the way it was narrated, using both the autobiographical writings of 100-year old Roseanne and the journal of her psychiatrist of many decades, Dr. Grene, well suited, essential even, to developing this particular plot line. I’m glad to be reading a new author! Anybody have suggestions for which book to read next?
13AnnieMod
Annie Dunne by Sebastian Barry
Viking, hardcover, 75k words.
Original publication: 2002;
Read: October 8, 2022 - October 9, 2022 - 4 stars.
Set in the summer of 1959 in Kelsha, Wicklow, Ireland (although there is a later reference which sends it into 1960, all other references are pointing to 1959), "Annie Dunne" is a novel about a place and a time and about a way of life that is already almost lost in the late 50s.
Annie Dunne was born in 1900 in Dublin and spent most of her life in the city - as the daughter of the police chief (in all but name). She never married - having been born with a hump (we know she was born with it because she is afraid of passing it to any children she may have), she spent most of her womanhood helping one of her sisters in the rearing of her 3 sons. Until her brother-in-law decided to remarry (only 2 years after poor Maud's death) and Annie was cast aside - alone in the world, without money or land, 57 years old and with nothing to show for her life. A cousin finally takes her in, Sarah Cullen, and Annie moves to the small farm in Kelsha, Wicklow, Ireland. The novel opens 2 years after all that happens, with the two women living together, having found their rhythm of daily tasks and shared life. But that summer of 1959 threatens to change everything again for Annie - in more than one way.
The novel is narrated by Annie - we never hear anyone else's voice and reading it a reader comes to realize that she is not the most reliable of narrators. Not because she is outright lying but her preconceptions and ideas color her narration and her way of looking at things. She knows that she is occasionally wicked and she tries not to be but it does not always work. But she also seems to fall into self-disparagement way too often.
So what changes her life? First one of the boys she helped rear up leaves his own children with her and Sarah for the summer while he and his wife try to build a new life in London. And then Billy Kerr, the handyman who occasionally helps them, seems to have decided to woo Sarah, the 61 years old Sarah who may not be beautiful or quite right in the head sometimes but who owns a 13 acres farm.
And while Annie tells us about the summer and what happens with the kids and with Billy Kerr, she often goes into her memories and tells us about her life and the people in it, about her biggest regrets and fears. Kelsha at the time is still closer to old Ireland, the one before cars and before bread you can buy in a store but even in this remote place, civilization is slowly changing things. Annie can sometimes be a snob and a busybody but she also sometimes can sound like someone you want to be your friend - she is never perfect, she never pretends not to think bad things - and that makes her sound real.
But as much as Annie Dunne is the main character of the novel, she is sharing that spotlight with the way of life she lives - a disappearing one which she is not ready to let go. It is a novel about the simple lives of people in the countryside. Towards the end of the novel, Annie has to face her own prejudices and to admit that she had been wrong and that a lot of what she had considered missing and lost is really there - changes don't always bring ruin and devastation.
It is a slow moving and lyrical novel which tells a simple story of a simple woman (not a simple-minded one), living her life in a time when the world around her seems to change in ways she cannot understand. At the same time it touches on a lot of dark topics because people will be people and darkness is part of daily life after all. It has a few disturbing passages, made even more sinister sounding because of the idyllic setting. And then there is Annie Dunne, a woman who tries to be honest to herself and who finds a way to finally see friendship and community where she used to see only people.
This is the first novel by Barry which I read but it won't be the last. It starts a cycle of novels about different members of the Dunne family through the years (there is also a play that introduced Annie to the world for the first time). A curious tidbit - Barry has another family saga as well, about the McNulty Family and once upon a time Sarah had a crush on a McNulty man. But then Ireland is a small country and it is possible that the name was just a coincidence. Or is it?
Viking, hardcover, 75k words.
Original publication: 2002;
Read: October 8, 2022 - October 9, 2022 - 4 stars.
Set in the summer of 1959 in Kelsha, Wicklow, Ireland (although there is a later reference which sends it into 1960, all other references are pointing to 1959), "Annie Dunne" is a novel about a place and a time and about a way of life that is already almost lost in the late 50s.
Annie Dunne was born in 1900 in Dublin and spent most of her life in the city - as the daughter of the police chief (in all but name). She never married - having been born with a hump (we know she was born with it because she is afraid of passing it to any children she may have), she spent most of her womanhood helping one of her sisters in the rearing of her 3 sons. Until her brother-in-law decided to remarry (only 2 years after poor Maud's death) and Annie was cast aside - alone in the world, without money or land, 57 years old and with nothing to show for her life. A cousin finally takes her in, Sarah Cullen, and Annie moves to the small farm in Kelsha, Wicklow, Ireland. The novel opens 2 years after all that happens, with the two women living together, having found their rhythm of daily tasks and shared life. But that summer of 1959 threatens to change everything again for Annie - in more than one way.
The novel is narrated by Annie - we never hear anyone else's voice and reading it a reader comes to realize that she is not the most reliable of narrators. Not because she is outright lying but her preconceptions and ideas color her narration and her way of looking at things. She knows that she is occasionally wicked and she tries not to be but it does not always work. But she also seems to fall into self-disparagement way too often.
So what changes her life? First one of the boys she helped rear up leaves his own children with her and Sarah for the summer while he and his wife try to build a new life in London. And then Billy Kerr, the handyman who occasionally helps them, seems to have decided to woo Sarah, the 61 years old Sarah who may not be beautiful or quite right in the head sometimes but who owns a 13 acres farm.
And while Annie tells us about the summer and what happens with the kids and with Billy Kerr, she often goes into her memories and tells us about her life and the people in it, about her biggest regrets and fears. Kelsha at the time is still closer to old Ireland, the one before cars and before bread you can buy in a store but even in this remote place, civilization is slowly changing things. Annie can sometimes be a snob and a busybody but she also sometimes can sound like someone you want to be your friend - she is never perfect, she never pretends not to think bad things - and that makes her sound real.
But as much as Annie Dunne is the main character of the novel, she is sharing that spotlight with the way of life she lives - a disappearing one which she is not ready to let go. It is a novel about the simple lives of people in the countryside. Towards the end of the novel, Annie has to face her own prejudices and to admit that she had been wrong and that a lot of what she had considered missing and lost is really there - changes don't always bring ruin and devastation.
It is a slow moving and lyrical novel which tells a simple story of a simple woman (not a simple-minded one), living her life in a time when the world around her seems to change in ways she cannot understand. At the same time it touches on a lot of dark topics because people will be people and darkness is part of daily life after all. It has a few disturbing passages, made even more sinister sounding because of the idyllic setting. And then there is Annie Dunne, a woman who tries to be honest to herself and who finds a way to finally see friendship and community where she used to see only people.
This is the first novel by Barry which I read but it won't be the last. It starts a cycle of novels about different members of the Dunne family through the years (there is also a play that introduced Annie to the world for the first time). A curious tidbit - Barry has another family saga as well, about the McNulty Family and once upon a time Sarah had a crush on a McNulty man. But then Ireland is a small country and it is possible that the name was just a coincidence. Or is it?
14MissWatson
I have finished Days without end. I needed some time to get used to the narrator's voice, but then it became a fascinating story about a period and a world I know little about. The most memorable parts are the lyrical descriptions of the landscapes. I am looking forward to my next book by this author.
15marell
I finished A Long Long Way. The majority of the book takes place in Belgium, where Willie Dunne fights with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during World War I. It is a truthful, brutal story of war in all its horror, but the writing is so splendid, I could hardly stop reading. There are some memorable characters here I won’t soon forget. A mighty work, in my humble opinion.
16AnnieMod
After Annie Dunne, while waiting for my library to get me another of his novels, I checked a few of his plays
Plays: 1: Boss Grady's Boys / Prayers of Sherkin / White Woman Street / The Only True History of Lizzie Finn / The Steward of Christendom by Sebastian Barry
Methuen Drama (1997), Paperback, 5 plays, 301 pages
Original publication: see notes on each play below
Read: October 11, 2022 - October 23, 2022 - 4 and a half stars
Reading 5 of the early Barry plays allows you to see a playwright finding his feet and getting stronger with each play. Not that the first play in this book is weak per se - there is a reason why it is still being staged, 34 years after its first staging in 1988 but the complexity of the plays changes with time and the chunkiness which is obvious in places slowly disappears.
For some reason Methuen Drama decided to skip his very first play ("The Pentagonal Dream" or "The Pentagonal Dream Under Snow") which was only performed in one season in 1986 and never staged again (or so it seems). I suspect that just as with other books in their series, Methuen will publish it one day in a later or a revised volume but as far as I can find out, it is not available as text anywhere. However, a version of it is available as an audio reading from the Unseen Plays project by Abbey Theatre (https://www.abbeytheatre.ie/whats-on/unseen-plays/), using the same actress who played the parts back in 1986 so I am planning to listen to it. But let's talk about the 5 plays Methuen did print in this first collection of Barry's plays.
As different as the 5 plays are, they are very Irish - even the play set in Ohio is Irish. They all deal with history but not with the big names and big events - or not directly anyway. It is all about how the life of the Irish people changed, dragging them into a new world which they don't always want and about the people who got left behind. Having read 'Annie Dunne' before I read the plays, I can see where a lot of the topics of the novel started to develop - even if just one of these plays is actually a prequel to that novel, they all had been leading the author towards the novel. According to the introduction by Fintan O'Toole (don't read it before you read the plays!), the plays were not the original media for the ideas either - most of them started as poems in "Fanny Hawke Goes to the Mainland Forever" (and probably some ideas are even coming from his earlier poetry collections - too bad that it is almost impossible to find them these days). But this evolution of ideas and moving through the different forms of storytelling shows an author who feels comfortable across all of them - and his styles shows it - his prose sounds like poetry sometimes.
Boss Grady's Boys
First Performance: Abbey Theatre, Dublin (Peacock stage), 22 August 1988
2 brothers, one in his sixties, the other in his seventies, live on a farm on the Cork/Kerry border. Modern life is slowly squeezing them out but neither of them is prepared to change. We see them trying to live their life while ghosts of the past show up in their dreams (and not just in dreams by the end of the play) reminding them of the past. This is by far my least favorite of the 5 plays - it is almost pointless (and some of the characters are confusing - why did we need the Girl at all?). I suspect that it can be extremely powerful when performed, with actors who know what they are doing but it is a nostalgic piece about old Ireland. It is the only play that is not dated explicitly but based on the textual clues, it is probably set somewhere in the mid-20th century. This is the play which made Barry's name initially and I can see it working in Ireland, with Irish actors and at the time it was staged (it made even more sense after reading the introduction of this book which discusses the changes Barry brought to Irish theatre).
Prayers of Sherkin
First Performance: Abbey Theatre, Dublin (Peacock stage), 20 November 1990
This play is semi-autobiographical for Barry: he used the story of his own great-grandmother. Except that all he knew about her was her name and that she left her family for his lithographer great-grandfather. From that, he creates a play set in the 1890s on the island of Sherkin and in the town of Baltimore, across the sea from the island. Two generations ago a 3 families sailed away from Manchester and ended up on the island - looking for a place for their own religion and promised land. 3 generations later, the only people remaining on the island are Fanny Hawke, her brother, their father and two aunts. The two young people cannot just marry anyone outside of the Faith (or they will be shunted), they need to wait for someone to come from Manchester (even if noone had heard of anyone there since they sailed away). Then a new man arrives in Baltimore from Cork City and even if you do not know how the play originated, you can see what needs to happen next - Fanny must chose between her people and the new world. It is a nice play about a past which most people don't think about when thinking of Ireland (and England) but in also serves as a bigger story about choosing immigration and leaving your island forever - being it Sherkin or Ireland. It is a very calm play but it works.
White Woman Street
First Performance: Bush Theatre, London, 23 April 1992
The only play not set in Ireland, it takes us to the small town of White Woman Street, Ohio, USA in 1916. Trooper O'Hara had left his native Sligo in his youth to fight a war (or three) and then ended up an outlaw somewhere in the States. His birthplays ties this play to the McNulty Family novels which Barry will later write but the name of the family is not mentioned in the play. In the prairies of Ohio, he and his band of friends/co-outlaws, decide to attack a train. And while everyone else in the company agrees because of what is on the train, Trooper is trying to excoriate a ghost of the past - a young woman who used to live in the town of White Woman Street.
While the play does take some liberties with its American setting (it feels more like a costume play than an actual play set there in some scenes), its story of a man who came from Ireland to escape oppression just to become part of the oppression of the Native Americans once he crossed the ocean works. Despite the end goal of holding up the train, the play is not really about it - it is about choices and stories and what a man can live with (and what happens when he decides that he cannot live with it anymore).
The Only True History of Lizzie Finn
First Performance: Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 4 October 1995
The last of the 5 to open but printed 4th in the book (written earlier maybe?), the story is set in Weston-upon-Mare, Avon and in Inch, Kerry in the early 1900s. Lizzie Finn is dancer in her late 30s, working in a dance-hall in Weston-upon-Mare and not expecting love to ever come her way. And then Robert shows up. The first act of the play deals with their romance and Lizzie's decision to leave her life. The second act makes this play though. Somehow Robert forgets to tell his new wife that he is the only surviving son of a landowner Irish family (Lizzie, who was born in Ireland, is the daughter of a man who entertained the landowners). But the biggest shock is not for Lizzie - because noone is ready to accept her. Add a few secrets about Robert's war experience (and his brothers' death) and the things get even more complicated.
Barry takes the history of the land and uses it to create flawed characters. But as you keep reading (or watching) the play, you start wondering who are the flawed characters here - Lizzie and Robert or everyone else in Inch. It is a play about being human and being allowed to make mistakes, even if the big history of Ireland keeps moving along. And just as with the previous play, it becomes a play about choices and finding a way to live with them once you make them.
The Steward of Christendom
First Performance: Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, 30 March, 1995 (apparently this one opened before Lizzie Finn).
Coming from 'Annie Dunne', this was the play I wanted to read the most. Set in 1932 in the county home (aka the asylum sans doctors) of Baltinglass, County Wicklow, it is the story of Thomas Dunne - the former chief superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. Loosely based on Barry's own grandfather, Thomas Dunne comes alive in a tale of madness and refusal to give up even when he cannot remember who is dead. The story alternates between Thomas's past (touching on a lot of major historical events) and his present - a broken man whose family had not abandoned him yet but who had had to lock him in the county house for everyone's safely.
The details of the county house life are terrifying, even in a play that shows the slow disintegration of a man's mind, these descriptions horrify. Barry reuses a lot of this play later - some of it as is, some of slightly changed (here Annie's hump is a result of polio, in the novel she is afraid of passing it to children and is envious of a woman who got her hump from a disease thus implying that she was born with it; the present in the haystack and the hen under the bucket stories are here as part of Thomas's past and in 'Annie Dunne' as part of his great-grandson's present). That ability to take one story and change it and reuse it in another format seems to indeed be one of the trademarks of Barry. But it also tells me that I probably should read his work in the order it was written - or some of those connections will be lost.
While not perfect, the collection is interesting and worth reading. And while each play can work on its own, seeing the progression allows a reader to both see Barry's art developing but also the connections between the plays and the threads that run through all of them.
====
I suspect I will be back with more Barry even after this month is over...
Plays: 1: Boss Grady's Boys / Prayers of Sherkin / White Woman Street / The Only True History of Lizzie Finn / The Steward of Christendom by Sebastian Barry
Methuen Drama (1997), Paperback, 5 plays, 301 pages
Original publication: see notes on each play below
Read: October 11, 2022 - October 23, 2022 - 4 and a half stars
Reading 5 of the early Barry plays allows you to see a playwright finding his feet and getting stronger with each play. Not that the first play in this book is weak per se - there is a reason why it is still being staged, 34 years after its first staging in 1988 but the complexity of the plays changes with time and the chunkiness which is obvious in places slowly disappears.
For some reason Methuen Drama decided to skip his very first play ("The Pentagonal Dream" or "The Pentagonal Dream Under Snow") which was only performed in one season in 1986 and never staged again (or so it seems). I suspect that just as with other books in their series, Methuen will publish it one day in a later or a revised volume but as far as I can find out, it is not available as text anywhere. However, a version of it is available as an audio reading from the Unseen Plays project by Abbey Theatre (https://www.abbeytheatre.ie/whats-on/unseen-plays/), using the same actress who played the parts back in 1986 so I am planning to listen to it. But let's talk about the 5 plays Methuen did print in this first collection of Barry's plays.
As different as the 5 plays are, they are very Irish - even the play set in Ohio is Irish. They all deal with history but not with the big names and big events - or not directly anyway. It is all about how the life of the Irish people changed, dragging them into a new world which they don't always want and about the people who got left behind. Having read 'Annie Dunne' before I read the plays, I can see where a lot of the topics of the novel started to develop - even if just one of these plays is actually a prequel to that novel, they all had been leading the author towards the novel. According to the introduction by Fintan O'Toole (don't read it before you read the plays!), the plays were not the original media for the ideas either - most of them started as poems in "Fanny Hawke Goes to the Mainland Forever" (and probably some ideas are even coming from his earlier poetry collections - too bad that it is almost impossible to find them these days). But this evolution of ideas and moving through the different forms of storytelling shows an author who feels comfortable across all of them - and his styles shows it - his prose sounds like poetry sometimes.
Boss Grady's Boys
First Performance: Abbey Theatre, Dublin (Peacock stage), 22 August 1988
2 brothers, one in his sixties, the other in his seventies, live on a farm on the Cork/Kerry border. Modern life is slowly squeezing them out but neither of them is prepared to change. We see them trying to live their life while ghosts of the past show up in their dreams (and not just in dreams by the end of the play) reminding them of the past. This is by far my least favorite of the 5 plays - it is almost pointless (and some of the characters are confusing - why did we need the Girl at all?). I suspect that it can be extremely powerful when performed, with actors who know what they are doing but it is a nostalgic piece about old Ireland. It is the only play that is not dated explicitly but based on the textual clues, it is probably set somewhere in the mid-20th century. This is the play which made Barry's name initially and I can see it working in Ireland, with Irish actors and at the time it was staged (it made even more sense after reading the introduction of this book which discusses the changes Barry brought to Irish theatre).
Prayers of Sherkin
First Performance: Abbey Theatre, Dublin (Peacock stage), 20 November 1990
This play is semi-autobiographical for Barry: he used the story of his own great-grandmother. Except that all he knew about her was her name and that she left her family for his lithographer great-grandfather. From that, he creates a play set in the 1890s on the island of Sherkin and in the town of Baltimore, across the sea from the island. Two generations ago a 3 families sailed away from Manchester and ended up on the island - looking for a place for their own religion and promised land. 3 generations later, the only people remaining on the island are Fanny Hawke, her brother, their father and two aunts. The two young people cannot just marry anyone outside of the Faith (or they will be shunted), they need to wait for someone to come from Manchester (even if noone had heard of anyone there since they sailed away). Then a new man arrives in Baltimore from Cork City and even if you do not know how the play originated, you can see what needs to happen next - Fanny must chose between her people and the new world. It is a nice play about a past which most people don't think about when thinking of Ireland (and England) but in also serves as a bigger story about choosing immigration and leaving your island forever - being it Sherkin or Ireland. It is a very calm play but it works.
White Woman Street
First Performance: Bush Theatre, London, 23 April 1992
The only play not set in Ireland, it takes us to the small town of White Woman Street, Ohio, USA in 1916. Trooper O'Hara had left his native Sligo in his youth to fight a war (or three) and then ended up an outlaw somewhere in the States. His birthplays ties this play to the McNulty Family novels which Barry will later write but the name of the family is not mentioned in the play. In the prairies of Ohio, he and his band of friends/co-outlaws, decide to attack a train. And while everyone else in the company agrees because of what is on the train, Trooper is trying to excoriate a ghost of the past - a young woman who used to live in the town of White Woman Street.
While the play does take some liberties with its American setting (it feels more like a costume play than an actual play set there in some scenes), its story of a man who came from Ireland to escape oppression just to become part of the oppression of the Native Americans once he crossed the ocean works. Despite the end goal of holding up the train, the play is not really about it - it is about choices and stories and what a man can live with (and what happens when he decides that he cannot live with it anymore).
The Only True History of Lizzie Finn
First Performance: Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 4 October 1995
The last of the 5 to open but printed 4th in the book (written earlier maybe?), the story is set in Weston-upon-Mare, Avon and in Inch, Kerry in the early 1900s. Lizzie Finn is dancer in her late 30s, working in a dance-hall in Weston-upon-Mare and not expecting love to ever come her way. And then Robert shows up. The first act of the play deals with their romance and Lizzie's decision to leave her life. The second act makes this play though. Somehow Robert forgets to tell his new wife that he is the only surviving son of a landowner Irish family (Lizzie, who was born in Ireland, is the daughter of a man who entertained the landowners). But the biggest shock is not for Lizzie - because noone is ready to accept her. Add a few secrets about Robert's war experience (and his brothers' death) and the things get even more complicated.
Barry takes the history of the land and uses it to create flawed characters. But as you keep reading (or watching) the play, you start wondering who are the flawed characters here - Lizzie and Robert or everyone else in Inch. It is a play about being human and being allowed to make mistakes, even if the big history of Ireland keeps moving along. And just as with the previous play, it becomes a play about choices and finding a way to live with them once you make them.
The Steward of Christendom
First Performance: Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, 30 March, 1995 (apparently this one opened before Lizzie Finn).
Coming from 'Annie Dunne', this was the play I wanted to read the most. Set in 1932 in the county home (aka the asylum sans doctors) of Baltinglass, County Wicklow, it is the story of Thomas Dunne - the former chief superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. Loosely based on Barry's own grandfather, Thomas Dunne comes alive in a tale of madness and refusal to give up even when he cannot remember who is dead. The story alternates between Thomas's past (touching on a lot of major historical events) and his present - a broken man whose family had not abandoned him yet but who had had to lock him in the county house for everyone's safely.
The details of the county house life are terrifying, even in a play that shows the slow disintegration of a man's mind, these descriptions horrify. Barry reuses a lot of this play later - some of it as is, some of slightly changed (here Annie's hump is a result of polio, in the novel she is afraid of passing it to children and is envious of a woman who got her hump from a disease thus implying that she was born with it; the present in the haystack and the hen under the bucket stories are here as part of Thomas's past and in 'Annie Dunne' as part of his great-grandson's present). That ability to take one story and change it and reuse it in another format seems to indeed be one of the trademarks of Barry. But it also tells me that I probably should read his work in the order it was written - or some of those connections will be lost.
While not perfect, the collection is interesting and worth reading. And while each play can work on its own, seeing the progression allows a reader to both see Barry's art developing but also the connections between the plays and the threads that run through all of them.
====
I suspect I will be back with more Barry even after this month is over...
