Rating: 
Summary: Hurrah for purple prose
Review: A wonderful story ruined by the author's constant attempts to come up with original and oh-so-clever descriptions (which in my opinion is the case with many poems). A few such sentences sprinkled throughout the book could have been tolerated, but practically every paragraph was just too much.
Rating: 
Summary: If you don't like poetry you won't like this book!
Review: A wonderful story ruined by the author's constant attempts to come up with original and oh-so-clever descriptions (which in my opinion is the case with many poems). A few such sentences sprinkled throughout the book could have been tolerated, but practically every paragraph was just too much.
Rating:
Summary: Maybe it is Joyce who should be compared to Nolan!
Review: Although Nolan's prose has often been compared to that of other, more famous writers-James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, W. B. Yeats, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, for example-his style is more accessible, making his story more readable, more emotionally powerful, and more personally involving than anything I've read by these other great writers. Minnie O'Brien lives, loves, ages, aches, and ultimately haunts. She's an extraordinary character presented in an extraordinary way by an equally extraordinary author.The basic story line is simple: Minnie O'Brien, an Irish countrywoman with a love for the land and her family, watches her three children grow up and leave the farm. As she ages into her eighties, she tries to keep the farm going, waiting for her youngest son, from whom she has never heard a word since his departure at age 17, to return to claim the land. But to describe the book in these terms is like describing Ulysses as a story about a man walking around Dublin. Nolan brings her to life by following the first rule of fiction: "Don't tell about something; recreate it." He does this, in part, by using vivid, emotionally charged words in new ways, sometimes using adjectives and nouns as verbs, conveying not only the emotional sense but also an action: In describing Minnie's actions at the death of her husband, we find that her cries were "cartwheeling around the room," before "she sacked her voice of screams" and dried her eyes, going downstairs to "perform the miraculous loaves and fishes reenactment," for the neighborhood wake. Minnie's connection to the land, her love for Peter, her devotion to her children, her commitment to what is good, and her ability to keep dreaming of the future, even as she is dying, are all part of the banyan tree of her life, one which will continue to bloom long after one finishes this book.
Rating:
Summary: C. Nolan: An artist at work
Review: Christoper Nolan painted this story as an artist paints a masterpiece. With each stroke of the pen, he etched in my mind the events of the past and present of the characters.
Rating:
Summary: C. Nolan: An artist at work
Review: Christoper Nolan painted this story as an artist paints a masterpiece. With each stroke of the pen, he etched in my mind the events of the past and present of the characters.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent audiobook drama in which Ireland comes alive!
Review: Christopher Bolan's Banyon Tree also provides excellent drama, set in rural Ireland in modern times and pairing Fiona Shaw's reading with the story of a woman who marries a man with a dangerous secret, bears his children, and struggles with neighbors. Ireland comes alive, here.
Rating:
Summary: Today's Answer to James Joyce
Review: I am interested in reading books by modern day Irish authors, and I did not regret having selected Christopher Nolan's book. What got me interested was in learning that the author is physically challenged, but Mr. Nolan is a literary genius. There might be some inaccuracies in the time and the dates in the story line, but with the prose, and literary style of Mr. Nolan, the reader floats through this wonderful book.
Rating:
Summary: Today's Answer to James Joyce
Review: I am interested in reading books by modern day Irish authors, and I did not regret having selected Christopher Nolan's book. What got me interested was in learning that the author is physically challenged, but Mr. Nolan is a literary genius. There might be some inaccuracies in the time and the dates in the story line, but with the prose, and literary style of Mr. Nolan, the reader floats through this wonderful book.
Rating:
Summary: The lush prose of a simple woman's life
Review: I read this brilliant novel thanks to an Amazon friend, entirely unfamiliar with this gifted author. From the first page, I willingly immersed my imagination in his uncommon phrasing and particular eye for description, where the ordinary becomes extraordinary and the plain beautiful. A simple tale of a mother's last years of widowhood and patient wait for worldly release becomes a transforming journey through the corridors of her soul, one not unlike the hidden beauty of my own mother's heart, perhaps, eventually, even of mine. For Minnie O'Brien is, at the core, the essence of motherhood at its most elemental and complex. We learn of her marriage and children through a loving wife and mother's eyes, she who remembers those precious childhood moments, when such sweet intimacy can pierce a heart with pain and joy in equal measure. From the start, Minnie and Peter O'Brien form a love match that sustains them through the years, raising three children. Brendan, the first-born, is enamored of a life in the Church, begun as a missionary, leading ultimately to a position as a Bishop. Their daughter, Sheila, has set down her own roots in England, established her own family. And the youngest O'Brien, Frankie, has heard the siren-call of wanderlust, impatient to begin his vague pursuit of worldly travel. Each of the O'Brien children step impulsively into their own futures, but of all, Minnie's heart refuses to relinquish the hope that Frankie, the prodigal son, will one day return. Into her eighth decade, she wills her aching bones and weary mind to keep moving through the daily necessities of their small farm, frequently lost in reverie, dancing over the fields of yesterday, reliving the passions of her youth. THE BANYAN TREE pulses with extravagant language, reforming archaic definitions, rendering sentences fresh and beautiful as the Emperor's New Clothes. The pages resonate with a passion for life, the intransigence of beauty, and, of course, the ultimate expectation of forgiveness. Don't read this book unless you love the taste of words on your tongue, or the turn of phrase as sensitive as a lover's glance that spreads across your face like fire. This novel is a treasure for those with an insatiable thirst for the road less traveled, the impulse to scale walls of words that become fanciful towers of impossible heights... and, as well, a willingness to abandon reasoning to genius.
Rating:
Summary: What an Stunning Novel
Review: I stumbled onto this novel by accident one day surfing around the Amazon site and I am so happy I picked this book up. It's an amazing story told by a man with an equally amazing story. I only hope we don't have to wait another 12 years for Nolan's next novel. The Banyon Tree pulls you in immediately and keeps you reading until the last page with prose that will take your breath away. Nolan's characters, especially Minnie, the 80-something protagonist are so real. They are normal people but Nolan tells his tale in such a way that they become extraordinary. Minnie has three children, and waits patiently for 40 years for the youngest, the one who left one day at age 18 to return to the family's Irish farm. She keeps the farm for him, living simply, thinking every day he will come back. She, and we, don't know his fate until almost the end of the book. This is a story of family, of love, of truth, of denial. There is something magical in Nolan's storytelling, something that hints at the stories untold that circle around the story we are reading. I highly, highly recommend this book. It's a treasure.
|
