Jason's Reviews > At Swim, Two Boys

Love is love is love.

This is a coming of age story. This is a period story, a history of Ireland leading up to the Easter Rising. This is a story about class, religion, and prejudice. This is a story about gay men. This is a love story on many levels.

O'Neill gives us a story centered around two young men, one seemingly naive and sweet, the other street smart, made to grow up quickly - "pal of each others' hearts" they are. These boys are dynamic and lovable, but for me it is the complexity of the side characters that really had me intrigued: the predator that is Brother Polycarp; the enigma of Eveline MacMurrough; the reserved shoppkeeper, father, and once a Dublin fusilier, Mr. Mack; the many-shades-of-gray Anthony MacMurrough, whom I have such sympathies for, while loathing many or his actions, and am still unsure of whether he may not be schizophrenic (though I tend to believe it is the compartmentalization of a complicated person). O'Neill's story and characters did not win me over immediately, I didn't even recognize them as complicated or gray for quite a while, like so many of my favorite books, the story has to grow on you, evolve and sneak up while your whiling away the time reading about political unrest, religious fear, and improprieties.

Grey morning dulled the bay. Banks of clouds, Howth just one more bank, rolled to sea, where other Howths grumbled to greet them. Swollen spumeless tide. Heads that bobbed like floating gulls and gulls that floating bobbed like heads. Two heads. At swim, two boys.

It is a strange, tender, and imperfect love story, as well as, a tale about the search for belonging, acceptance. It is dirty and lovely, but not quite a perfect read... perhaps if only Doyler could just spit a little less - great gobs, strings of spittle, sprays of it.