The basic plotline of Kevin Barry's 'Night Boat to Tangier' -- two middle-aged Irish gangsters waiting in the sordid surroundings of the port of Algeciras-- is not a particularly catchy proposition for an appealing read. Reader beware ! Kevin Barry demonstrates his extraordinary talent for narration by exploiting these banal circumstances of not-so-ordinary travellers to reveal the hidden layers of the protagonists' past lives and hidden secrets which explain in part the characters' obsessive quest for a daughter apparently lost in the flow of the traveller community between Spain and Morocco.
The endless zig-zagging between past and present, different cultures and frontiers…. all of these devices of destabilization plunge the reader into the chaotic journey Charlie and Maurice undergo in the process of coming to grips with certain unexpected home truths. A novel for fans of the universe of Nick Cave.
Still waiting for Godot
The basic plotline of Kevin Barry's 'Night Boat to Tangier' -- two middle-aged Irish gangsters waiting in the sordid surroundings of the port of Algeciras-- is not a particularly catchy proposition for an appealing read. Reader beware ! Kevin Barry demonstrates his extraordinary talent for narration by exploiting these banal circumstances of not-so-ordinary travellers to reveal the hidden layers of the protagonists' past lives and hidden secrets which explain in part the characters' obsessive quest for a daughter apparently lost in the flow of the traveller community between Spain and Morocco. The endless zig-zagging between past and present, different cultures and frontiers…. all of these devices of destabilization plunge the reader into the chaotic journey Charlie and Maurice undergo in the process of coming to grips with certain unexpected home truths. A novel for fans of the universe of Nick Cave.