Night Boat to Tangier | Kevin Barry

I can't remember how I came to read this book. Pretty sure I saw Barry mentioned in another book review and made a note. Night Boat to Tangier is Barry's latest novel and some think his best. He has written many short stories that are very well-reviewed. Barry is an Irish writer, and so you can expect dark comedy. He's won prizes for nearly everything he's written and according to his Wikipedia listing, he's rawly ambitious and intends to win a Nobel prize. He sounds as hard to be around as his characters in this book!

The story takes place over a single night where Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond wait in the ferry terminal in Algeciras, Spain to see if they can see Dilly, Maurice's daughter. Maurice and Charlie are long-time drug dealers and smugglers (Irish gangsters) and various other flavors of criminal. They're not people you'd want to be sitting next to in a terminal or even know of, yet Barry draws these lifelong friends with empathy as they ride the ups and downs of their friendship. Through flashback chapters, you learn the backstories of Maurice, Charlie and Dilly. The book is nearly all dialogue, and as it seems with all Irish writers, Barry's dialogue is breathtaking. Don't get me wrong -- the book is dark. But the writing is so strong. I would put Barry in the category of being a "writer's writer." It's not a quick read, both because the dialogue makes you want to linger, and because the story is, well, difficult in that every character is deeply flawed, damaged and complicated. As an aside, I've actually been in Algeciras, Spain, and have no memory of it being as seedy a place as depicted in this book. It was a couple decades before the action of this book. Makes me curious about how it is now, though.