At Swim, Two Boys: A Novel - Couverture rigide

'The music of Jamie O'Neill's prose creates a new Irish symphony' PETER ACKROYD
" (A) heartachingly beautiful novel...reminiscent of James Joyce"
"This is a work of great originality, strength and sensitivity"
The Independent on Sunday
"This is an exhilarating novel because superabundant creative energy is always exhilarating"
Daily Telegraph
"Teeming with satisfying coincidence and revelation...At Swim, Two Boys is both a footnote and foot forward, flexing its muscles within the Irish canon and breaking new emotional ground."
The Guardian
"Massive satisfactions to be had from Jamie O'Neill's first novel"
The Observer
"Worthy of his literary precursors...his writing has a freshness and charm that makes it very enjoyable"
Play (supplement to The Times)
"An enormously impressive book, skilful, intricate and polished"
"A supremely accomplished novel"
The Sunday Business Post
"What we are witnessing here is the emergence of a writer who has even more belief in his talent than even the young Joyce had in his"
The Sunday Tribune
"This stunning debut treads gracefully in the footsteps of the Republic's heritage. It is an ambitious doorstop of a novel, and is executed with a confidence and urgency worthy of its subject."
"The prose breathes the very air of the times, bringing to life both the grand panorama of history and the minutia of its detail."
Daily Express
"This novel is not merely long, it is also large, as large as the talent of its author, a coming writer, with gifts to burn."
The Scotsman

Set in Dublin and its near surrounds AT SWIM, TWO BOYS follows the turbulent year to Easter 1916. At its core it tells the love of two boys, Jim, a naive and reticent scholar, the younger son of foolish, aspirant shopkeeper Mr Mack, and Doyler, the dark rough diamond son of Mr Mack's old army pal.
Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of rock where gentlemen bathe in the scandalous nude, the two boys meet day after day. There they make a pact: that Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, they will swim the bay to the distant beacon of the Muglins rock, to raise the Green and claim it for themselves. As Ireland sets forth towards her uncertain glory there unfolds a love story of the utmost tenderness, carrying the reader through the turbulence of the times like a full blown sail.
AT SWIM, TWO BOYS is written with great verve and mastery. It shares those elements that are the marks of all great books - the breadth of its canvas, the skill of its brush, the intensity of its subjects and, above all, the shining light of its humanity.