Sebastian Barry closes his American trilogy with a formerly enslaved narrator
The Guardian gives an admiring review to The Newer World, the third novel in the Irish author's loose sequence set around the American civil war.
The Guardian has published a review of The Newer World, the new novel by the Irish writer Sebastian Barry, calling it "a near-miracle of storytelling." The book is narrated by Tennyson Bouguereau, a formerly enslaved man recounting his life in the aftermath of the American civil war.
According to the review, The Newer World is the third book in a loose trilogy Barry has built around this period of American history, following on from Days Without End, for which he won his second Costa award. That earlier novel followed Thomas McNulty, a member of the fictional McNulty family Barry has used across several books to refract both Irish and American history. Barry's 2008 novel The Secret Scripture also won a Costa award.
The reviewer frames the new book around a line given to its narrator — "is not the story as good as the truth?" — reading it as Barry's own argument, across his body of work, for fiction's capacity to fill in what written history leaves out, particularly for those whose lives history did not trouble to record.
No French edition or publication date for The Newer World is mentioned in the material available.
Sources
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