2023-04-19
Duffy provides a tale of survival set in tumultuous 12-century Ireland.
A teenager lives with his enslaved father, who teaches him the language and stories of his ancestors. In 1171, Alberic’s life changes when he undertakes tasks that, in the eyes of those around him, prove his courage; he successfully retrieves a powerful stone called a kelt for Mánus, and on a raid into the land of the lord’s enemy, he kills his first man. He also falls in love with Ness, a woman captured during the raid. Later, Alberic is captured by English invaders who’d been making their way north, and he finds himself caught between the people who enslaved him and those who share his ancestry. The English Baron de Lacy grows to trust him and sends him north to help conquer Mánus’ province. Alberic fights for the baron but attempts to protect civilians. Duffy bases his story on true historical events of the Norman conquest of Ireland, although Alberic himself is fictional. However, his work provides an engaging story that a nonfiction work could not; historians know little of the lives of people like Alberic, so it is a treat to immerse oneself in Duffy’s conjectures. It’s a gritty, unpredictable, and violent world that also has moments of beauty (“a bright, many-tongued stream, running thin over the stone, had cut in beneath an overhanging tree, the deep water beneath a shelter for speckled fish”), poetry, and even references to magic. Duffy provides a glossary of Gaelic, Latin, Norse, and Middle English and character lists, but some readers may still become frustrated by the frequency of unfamiliar terms and names; Alberic narrates his story in a manner that’s believable enough to pull the reader along.
An entertaining and informative tale about Irish life and the coming of the English at the end of the Middle Ages.
