October book of the month: Days without End by Sebastian Barry - Join the author webchat 6 November, 9pm

[RachelMumsnet]

Our October book of the month is Sebastian Barry's remarkable novel about two young men growing up in 1800s America. Having signed up for the army they are sent to fight in the Indian Wars and later in the American Civil War. This is a brutal and violent story but also an epic love story beautifully told by Barry's sensuous and lyrical prose.

Days Without End is the deserved winner of the 2016 Costa Book Award and was longlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize. It is undoubtedly one of our favourite books of the year and we're honoured and excited that Sebastian Barry will be joining us in November to answer questions about the novel. We'll announce the date as soon as it's firmed up but in the meantime, hop over to the book of the month page to apply for a free copy (there's 50 up for grabs). We'll be closing the giveaway at 10am on Wednesday 4 October and the books will be sent out later that week. If you're not selected this month, please do buy a copy and read ahead of the webchat.

Thank you. It was such an interesting read. I have to admit to crying a little several times throughout.

This was the first of your books I've read but I will definitely give some others a shot.

Hi Sebastian, I loved your book! It was bleak but the relationship between Cole and McNulty was beautiful. I know nothing of the history and the laws of the time but I feel like their life style was a courageous, but natural feeling, choice. I wondered if they were based on any historical characters?

@Celama

Hi Sebastian

What a truly haunting book, beautifully written and so emotive. Absolutely loved this and couldn't put it down once I started it as I went into it blind. Will definitely read more of your work.

How long did it take you to write? Did it take longer than your other works? For some reason, I just got the impression that it had been rewritten and rewritten to get it so perfect?

Dear Celama

It took fifty years to think about and about five months to write. And even so I sat here for 9 months just waiting for the first sentence. Then Thomas had my attention and I just listened and listened to him, and did my best to get it down.

Fabulous advice. I'm interested in your writing process - do you hand write or type?
I imagine you filing pages and pages of a beautiful notebook. (Romantic likely uninformed vision of writers alert!)

Hi Sebastian thanks for taking the time out to chat. I'm loving your responses so far - so interesting to find out more about this book.

This is the first book of yours that I have read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I agree that it would make a great film.

Which of your other books would you recommend I read next?

@GhostsToMonsoon

I enjoyed this book and felt like I was listening to Thomas telling his story, although the descriptions of human and animal suffering were not easy reading.

I would like to ask what made you write about this period of American history and if you had much prior knowledge of it.

Dear GhostsToMonsoon

What a poetic name you have. Well, I think I knew the version you get from the older history books and indeed the Westerns -- but you soon see that that won't do. History written by the victors sadly must always be suspect, including also Irish history. You have to try and go behind the houses and see what's hidden and hiding there.

Thank you for your reply. It’s wonderful to find out more about the author.

Good luck with your next project.

@RachelMumsnet

It's funny that so many people are saying they'd like to see the book made into a film. I'm just worried about who would be cast as John Cole -surely there's no-one in real life as handsome as John Cole in the book?

Maybe we can find the real man somehow -- modern science might be good for it.

Thanks for answering my question. Like others here I know very little about this period of American history (mainly gleaned from Little House on the Prairie and Gone with the Wind!), and I now feel much better informed. It clearly was a brutal time and you have to feel for the many young Irish boys who went to seek their fortune in a new land and found themselves caught up in the violence. When I was reading, I could hear Thomas' Irish accent coming through which was lovely.

Are you working on something new at the moment? And, where do you write?

@lalamcbride

I have read lots of reviews stating that your son and his relationships was the inspiration for this book. You had stated in an interview in the guardian that "One of my son’s great fascinations is in drag, we watch RuPaul’s Drag Race together, so I realise that’s a very important part of the landscape." My question for you is was the above the inspiration for the young men dancing in drag at the start of the book.

Dear lalamcbride

I hope I have answered this great question in other answers?

5 months to write a novel! Blimey. Does this mean your next one is out soon? I think you have a bevvy of new fans here on Mumsnet. It is such a very beautiful book, but actually now I know about your son it makes it more precious somehow. My parents would have really struggled if I'd been gay (I'm very boringly straight, married, with 2.4 children - I'm incredibly boring and pretty happy!) because it's not what they are used to, but they'd have made it ok because they love their kids. Do you think you'd have written about gay characters without the influence of Toby?

I found it interesting that you chose to write the story as though Thomas was telling it. Did you intend to do this when you first started writing it or was it something that you slipped into as you went along?

@Greensmurf1

Just finished reading Days Without End. The narrator has such an interesting "voice". I felt like I was at times reading a diary or somehow tapping into someone's internal monologue. It was indeed lyrical prose and enabled my imagination to picture so much of the action.

I think it's only the second novel I've read which weaves gender identity themes into the narrative. The other one I can think of is Middlesex.

I'd be interested to find out more about Sebastian Barry's research into historical records, how he developed the characters and whether there were letters and diaries that revealed details of the lives of actual transgendered people living in that era. It's not a side of American history we really explored in school. We did, in some ways, get the less than exalted picture of the brutality of western expansion, the Civil War and its aftermath, but it was presented in less graphic terms and we didn't get the intimate details that historical fiction can allow.

Dear Greensmurf1

Thanks for the Eugenides reference! I admire him so much I gave his name to a Greek character in another novel of mine On Canaan's Side. I met him on a plane once. Was starstruck and gabbling I'm afraid. Since became a friend.

@Givemecoffeeplease

I luffs John Cole.

Dear Givemecoffeeplease

So do I!

@Belo

Hi Sebastian, I loved your book! It was bleak but the relationship between Cole and McNulty was beautiful. I know nothing of the history and the laws of the time but I feel like their life style was a courageous, but natural feeling, choice. I wondered if they were based on any historical characters?

Dear Belo,

You know, I thought I was making them up, but it seems to me sometimes they must be real. Maybe Einstein was right, and all time and all places are happening all as one. People talk to me about Winona and she becomes more and more real to me, and I do forget she might be a character in a book. Sometimes seems like an insult to her to suggest she might be.

Thank you Sebastian for your reply (I am so old that my name is a volume of a children's encyclopedia from the pre-Google days).

I have to admit my knowledge of this period is mainly based on Dances With Wolves (I didn't even realise where Winona Ryder's first name originates from).

I was also curious about some aspects of Thomas's speech, for example him missing the verbs out. I liked some of his observations too, like perhaps only having 100 days in your life that you can actually remember clearly.

@SallySwann

I found it interesting that you chose to write the story as though Thomas was telling it. Did you intend to do this when you first started writing it or was it something that you slipped into as you went along?

Dear Sallyswan

I don't know what I meant to do. I did spend some of the waiting time 'writing' about the Irish famine, chapters which I then threw away, not because they were no good, but because they didn't 'sound like' Thomas to me really. For many years I've been trying to work out what happens and happened to English in various places when the language went away from its home place -- Ireland, Nigeria, and indeed the US. Most of my books are either told by the main character, or written down by them. Maybe all my years in theatre leaking into my novel writing... Something about the 'actual' voice, even when it's 'made up'. The robin has his song and so does every human creature, a signature and a soul.

@FernieB

Thanks for answering my question. Like others here I know very little about this period of American history (mainly gleaned from Little House on the Prairie and Gone with the Wind!), and I now feel much better informed. It clearly was a brutal time and you have to feel for the many young Irish boys who went to seek their fortune in a new land and found themselves caught up in the violence. When I was reading, I could hear Thomas' Irish accent coming through which was lovely.

Are you working on something new at the moment? And, where do you write?

Dear FernieB

I will be blundering on in the dark as is my wont! The only way to write. Not quite sure what next. But I write in a little room in this old rectory that was once the study where the Church of Ireland rectors wrote their sermons. It has a stove, some bookcases, and a window out into the garden, which my wife has heroically made. Ridiculously beautiful (garden and wife!) My wife is also a screenwriter, she wrote A Little Chaos directed by wonderful Alan Rickman.

I agree, Sebastian, Winona does feel
so real. I keep wondering how her story ended up, and about the stories of her many relatives and the rest of the Native American people. Your book ignited an interest in me. Can you recommend any books on the topic?

And, is there any chance that Winona will come back in one of your future books? (Pretty please!)

@GhostsToMonsoon

Thank you Sebastian for your reply (I am so old that my name is a volume of a children's encyclopedia from the pre-Google days).

I have to admit my knowledge of this period is mainly based on Dances With Wolves (I didn't even realise where Winona Ryder's first name originates from).

I was also curious about some aspects of Thomas's speech, for example him missing the verbs out. I liked some of his observations too, like perhaps only having 100 days in your life that you can actually remember clearly.

Dear GhostsTo Monsoon

Too true, no? So I find! Maybe 99 days?

@Givemecoffeeplease

5 months to write a novel! Blimey. Does this mean your next one is out soon? I think you have a bevvy of new fans here on Mumsnet. It is such a very beautiful book, but actually now I know about your son it makes it more precious somehow. My parents would have really struggled if I'd been gay (I'm very boringly straight, married, with 2.4 children - I'm incredibly boring and pretty happy!) because it's not what they are used to, but they'd have made it ok because they love their kids. Do you think you'd have written about gay characters without the influence of Toby?

Dear Givemecoffeeplease

Maybe not Toby is my muse! His greatest compliment to his stupid father: 'Well, Dad, you're not gay but you're an ally and (this quietly) I liked your book...' Otherwise my three children have never read a word I've written I do drag them to my plays though.

@Belo

I agree, Sebastian, Winona does feel so real. I keep wondering how her story ended up, and about the stories of her many relatives and the rest of the Native American people. Your book ignited an interest in me. Can you recommend any books on the topic?

And, is there any chance that Winona will come back in one of your future books? (Pretty please!)

Dear Belo

Do you know... Maybe... I'll have to ask her politely.

Just curious, which book would you take to a desert island and what was your favourite children's book?

It's good to hear you're a fan /friend of Eugenides - he joined us a couple of years ago when we read The Marriage Plot. Reading Days Without End also brought to mind for another book we read for Mumsnet Bookclub a few years ago - Madeline Millar's Song Of Achilles a retelling of the Iliad which has a beautifully depicts the love story of Patroclus and Achilles (I did have to look that up!) Have you read this book?

I am halfway through your book, not my normal read but throughly enjoying it. I would love to write a book but do not know where to start, what First inspired you .