Night Boat to Tangier
Ratings26
Average rating3.8
I listened to the author read this book and it was mesmerizing. Highly recommended as an audible book.
I abandoned this a little past halfway through. Just couldn't do it. It was way too boring and the characters were basically 50-something, drug-running, Irish thugs. They sitting around a Spanish ferry terminal hoping to run into the daughter of one of them. To say that not much happens is to be understating the fact. Their waiting around bemoaning their lot in life and being unpleasant is interspersed with flashbacks to them doing drugs, getting laid, and being unpleasant. I found it pointless.
Took me a bit to get into it but loved it then. Great story, wonderfully told. Interesting and unpredictable. I thought it read like a screenplay at times and sure enough there's a movie in the works, should be class.
Barry's particular style of writing - laden with description, detailing events play-by-play, and full of poignant statements on the human condition - makes this an incredibly vibrant read that draws you in and doesn't let go. I love the lack of quotation marks and how it blurs the lines between dialogue and description, and the insight into the characters gained through flashbacks.
I almost didn't want to give this a rating because I don't think I really gave it a good effort. I listened to the audiobook on loan from the library and it just didn't really hold my attention, to be honest.
There's some nice passages in here and I enjoyed the narration by the author, but I could barely even tell you what the plot was if pressed. It was quite short (~6 hours), so I actually might give it another shot sometime and come back and revise this.
I really liked the way this novel, Night Boat to Tangier, started: two aging Irish gangsters, sitting on a dock, talking to one another while they keep an eye out for a young woman named Dilly. Had this story been kept to just that for twenty or thirty pages with a nice little ending, I think I would've thoroughly enjoyed it.
Of course, Night Boat to Tangier doesn't keep it that simple. The narrative jumps back and forth between present and past to fill in all the pieces that I didn't ask to be filled in on. Perhaps all this information helps the reader to understand the relationships between these characters, but I didn't enjoy any of these recollections and I personally did not find them necessary.
For me, Night Boat to Tangier was at its best when it focused on the relationships in the present. In these moments, Barry's writing was gritty, terse, and filled with longing. All the pain that mattered to me as a reader took place in the present. Every time I got pulled away from this pain, I became a little more numb. And by the end, I was ready to move on.