ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
NPR • THE ATLANTIC • THE MILLIONS • MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE • ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH • LIT HUB • LIBRARY JOURNAL • THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
In the dark waiting room of the ferry terminal in the sketchy Spanish port of Algeciras, two aging Irishmen—Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond, longtime partners in the lucrative and dangerous enterprise of smuggling drugs—sit at night, none too patiently. It is October 23, 2018, and they are trying to locate Maurice’s estranged daughter, Dilly, whom they’ve heard is either arriving on a boat coming from Tangier or departing on one heading there.
This nocturnal vigil will initiate an extraordinary journey back in time to excavate their shared history of violence, romance, mutual betrayals, and serial exiles. Rendered with the dark humor and the hardboiled Hibernian lyricism that have made Kevin Barry one of the most striking and admired fiction writers at work today, Night Boat to Tangier is a superbly melancholic melody of a novel, full of beautiful phrases and terrible men.
“A darkly incantatory tragicomedy of love and betrayal. . . . Beautifully paced, emotionally wise.” —The Boston Globe
“A dark, haunting novel. . . . Features gorgeous writing on every page.” —NPR
“Poetic. . . . Deft and generous.” —The New York Times
“A meticulous, devastatingly vivid portrayal of serious crime and its real consequences.”—The Guardian
“I had to quit reading this book the first day I had it in my hands, just so I could have it to read the next day. It’s that good.” —Richard Ford
“Barry has a great gift for getting the atmospheres of sketchy social hubs in a few phosphorescent lines. . . . The sheer lyric intensity . . . brings its variously warped and ruined souls into being.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Kevin Barry channels the music in every voice . . . and the comic genius in everyone.” —The Washington Post
“[Barry] is a writer of inspired prose, a funny and perceptive artist who can imbue a small story with tremendous depth. . . . A sad, lyrical beauty of a novel.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Brutal and funny. . . . The prose is a glory.” —The Paris Review
“Tautly written. . . . Dreamlike.” —The New Yorker
“Barry is blowing up language left, right, and center in his books. . . . This is a guy who can nail details like he’s throwing knives. . . . Essential reading. . . . A profoundly good book.” —The Brooklyn Rail
“A fascinating hybrid of poetry, prose and drama. . . . A remarkably achieved novel which shows a writer in full command of the possibilities of the form.” —Irish Times
“Sad and funny in equal measure. . . . As with everything Barry writes, it’s the language that grips you by the throat.”—Evening Standard (London)
“This hypnotically beautiful tone poem is both wildly comic and deeply sad. . . . A transformative celebration of language itself.” —Booklist
“Wildly and inventively coarse, and something to behold. As far as bleak Irish fiction goes, this is black tar heroin.” —Publishers Weekly
