If you’ve read and loved Days Without End and A Thousand Moons, Sebastian Barry’s loosely-connected novels set during the American Civil war, don’t miss The Newer World. What is it like to live in the aftermath of war in the vacuum between survival, death, atrocities, hatred and returning home? Where does the poison of war linger? Beautifully, and at times hauntingly-written, The Newer World is the story of Tennessee man Tennyson Bouguereau, freed man, farmer, singer, brother and soldier. Tennyson has always sung, the songs of the field, the songs of his mother, the songs of the slaves. Sponsored by a local lawyer he is given the chance for a new life and goes to Nashville to join a choir of freed men. This is about more than singing, it is about learning to live free in the world. The college helps him to leave behind the ways of a farmhand and teaches him to read, write, sing, to keep himself and his clothes clean. And there he meets a woman to love, Minnie, and a best friend, George.
This is a story that skips across continents and American states but also has the time to watch time pass slowly, to see the sun rise and set again. After the choir’s trip to England where they sing for the great, the good and the common people, and are welcomed by all, they return to Nashville. In love with Minnie, Tennyson is faced with an impossible to decision; to choose between his love, and his friend.
When Tennyson follows George into the army they are sent to New Mexico to fight the Apache, a people Tennyson knows are trying to hold onto their own lands against the might of Washington. Another suppsedly free people still hobbled and constrained as his people are. The leader of the army’s Seminole scouts is an two-armed Indian called One-Arm Charlie who ‘had a strong look of the Bouguereaus.’ Despite Tennyson’s attempts to engage Charlie in conversation, he fails. ‘Funny how the slant of a body, just even a way of standing, how a person walked, beckoned me to friendship. But it was no go without a bit of language.’
Universal themes are explored and Tennyson’s first person narrative is addictive as he faces some of life’s biggest problems. The pages turn easily even when Tennyson is considering nothing more than the blowing of the wind or the hooves of his horse Balius. Having studied Greek in Nashville, he considers the parallels between his own journey and that of Odysseus returning home, and vows he will also ‘strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’ Tennyson is a freed slave, but is he truly a free man? As he travels to Nashville at the urging of Lawyer Briscoe, crosses the ocean with the choir and joins the army with George, he carries with him the weighty hopes, debts and expectations of others; but what of his own wishes and dreams?
America after the Civil War is not a new world, it is a world newer than the pre-war one but ridden with many of the same divisions, prejudices and hatred and a few new ones. The newly freed men and women must find their way to live in this uncertain country and find love, comradeship, opportunity and forgiveness.
These three novels are a wonder, a must-read, and Tennyson is a character to fall in love with. Barry’s writing is exquisite, his plotting light-handed, the emotions tense.
Please note that although The Newer World can be read as a standalone novel, its setting, themes and characters – including Thomas McNulty, John Cole and Winona – are intertwined with Days Without End and A Thousand Moons.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Sebastian Barry:-
A LONG LONG WAY
DAYS WITHOUT END #1DAYSWITHOUTEND
A THOUSAND MOONS #2DAYSWITHOUTEND
OLD GOD’S TIME
THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS MCNULTY … and try the #FirstPara of THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS MCNULTY

If you like this, try:-
‘Life Class’ by Pat Barker #1LIFECLASS
‘Life after Life’ by Kate Atkinson
‘Love is Blind’ by William Boyd

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview THE NEWER WORLD by Sebastian Barry https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-abm via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-