Donoghue is good at endings, as readers of "Room" know, and here again she metes out narrative justice with a firm hand. Slowly Trian and Cormac come to fully understand what the awful Artt has in mind for them.ĭonoghue's characterizations of the three men, her vivid imagining of the measures they must take to survive, and her beautiful descriptions of the landscape and wildlife - puffins galore - make this book readable even for those who don't care much about medieval Christianity.Ī strange turn of events having to do with Trian's secret brings the book to its climax. Most appalling, instead of traveling to the mainland to trade, they must make do with what they can find on the inhospitable skellig, even as they deplete what little resources it offers. Poor Trian, who is a talented fisherman and lover of nature with no skill at all for reading or copying, is put to work doing just that from dawn to dusk. So instead of building a shelter, Cormac must build an altar and a chapel. The bad news is that Artt is a jerk, to put it bluntly, continually overruling reasonable proposals made by his two disciples in favor of holy activities. Artt has chosen well, since each of these men has skills that will prove essential, and they take vows of obedience which put these skills at his disposal. The other is Cormac, one of the oldest monks, a garrulous storyteller who found his religious calling late in life after losing his wife and daughters to the plague. So when Artt has a dream that he must take two monks with him on a journey to an uninhabited place, Trian is pleased to hear that one of them is him. To the youngest monk, Trian, Artt is the most interesting person he's seen in the six years since he was given to the abbot by his parents at age 13 - for reasons which are withheld until the dramatic final chapters.
He has "the bearing of a warrior king but he behaves like a scrupulous monk working out a long penance." The leader of the trio is a man called Artt, a wandering scholar and priest who shows up at Cluain Mhic Nois, a monastery on the River Shannon.
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