At Swim, Two Boys
SynopsisPlot
Jim Mack is a naïve young scholar and the son of a foolish, aspiring shopkeeper. Doyler Doyle is the rough-diamond son—revolutionary and blasphemous—of Mr. Mack’s old army pal. Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of rock where gentlemen bathe in the nude, the two boys make a pact: Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, on Easter of 1916, they will swim to the distant beacon of Muglins Rock and claim that island for themselves. All the while Mr. Mack, who has grand plans for a corner shop empire, remains unaware of the depth of the boys’ burgeoning friendship and of the changing landscape of a nation.
Story
About this book
Jamie O'Neill's novel unfolds in Dublin during the year before the Easter Rising of 1916, when Irish republicans took up arms against British rule. Its two central figures are teenage boys from different worlds. Jim Mack is a studious, sheltered scholar whose father keeps a small shop and dreams of expanding it. Doyler Doyle, son of Mr. Mack's old army companion, is rougher and drawn to revolutionary politics.
They meet at the Forty Foot, a rocky bathing place on the south Dublin coast where men swim naked in open water. There Doyler offers to teach Jim to swim, and they set a goal: by Easter 1916, they will cross to Muglins Rock, a small beacon-marked island offshore, and claim it for themselves. Over the months, their friendship grows into something neither expected.
Jim's father, meanwhile, stays absorbed in plans for a chain of corner shops and notices little of his son's life or of the shifting political mood. O'Neill spent about ten years writing the book, and its language is densely worked, using Irish English idiom to move between private feeling and public upheaval.
