A Thousand Moons: Barry skilfully reclaims a family’s hidden history

The Irish author’s latest novel is set in an America still rebuilding itself after the Civil War

Sebastian Barry creates an expansive and humane fictional universe. Picture: Getty

A Thousand Moons

By Sebastian Barry

Faber, €16.88

Two themes that resonate throughout Sebastian Barry’s oeuvre are the complexities of personal identity and the struggles of his narrators, who are often a little less blandly ordinary than others in their society.

This is not to suggest that his narrators are outsiders in the sense that Albert Camus used the term. Instead, in Barry’s works they are outcasts, denied the right to feel like they belong. ...