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A review by gorecki
Redemption Falls by Joseph O'Connor
3.0
I've only read two other books by Joseph O'Connor so far: Star of the Sea and Ghostlight, and I can honestly say that just like them, Redemption Falls is full of ambition, masterful writing, and poetry-like prose. The creativity and energy O'Connor invests in his writing have long earned my respect and admiration for him.
True to the style he uses in Star of the Sea, O'Connor creates many different "documents" and sources of information to build this story: letters and personal correspondence of people involved, newspaper articles, announcements posted on the streets, witness testimonies and even songs and ballads "from the period". All of these documents add up to tell the story of a girl who crosses the United States barefoot, searching for her brother, said brother joining the army only to end up in the house of an alcoholic Irish patriot sentenced to death, then sent to Australia, then ran-away to the States, and the not so successful marriage of said patriot. If this book isn't a page-turner, I don't know what is.
But. As much as I couldn't get enough of it and utterly enjoyed O'Connor's delightful writing, I was also a bit disappointed. First of all, O'Connor used a bit too much "cowboy English" from the 19th century for my taste - with a vast array of different dialects, pronunciations, and jargon - this slowed me down quite a few times and at some point seemed a bit overdone. I did get used to it eventually, and actually started enjoying it a bit after a while, but then another issue came up - around the last third of the book I started feeling that the main story, its culmination, was a bit too simple and flat compared to the complexity of the novel. I didn't feel this book needs so many characters, so many sources of information, and so many complications to achieve what actually happens in the end. I was wondering whether O'Connor got lost in his own over-complication of the events in this book and couldn't find his way out of it, or if he just had all these ideas he wanted to put on paper and decided to cram them all in one book.
Overall - spectacular writing from a really inspiring and creative author, but a tad over-complicated story.
True to the style he uses in Star of the Sea, O'Connor creates many different "documents" and sources of information to build this story: letters and personal correspondence of people involved, newspaper articles, announcements posted on the streets, witness testimonies and even songs and ballads "from the period". All of these documents add up to tell the story of a girl who crosses the United States barefoot, searching for her brother, said brother joining the army only to end up in the house of an alcoholic Irish patriot sentenced to death, then sent to Australia, then ran-away to the States, and the not so successful marriage of said patriot. If this book isn't a page-turner, I don't know what is.
But. As much as I couldn't get enough of it and utterly enjoyed O'Connor's delightful writing, I was also a bit disappointed. First of all, O'Connor used a bit too much "cowboy English" from the 19th century for my taste - with a vast array of different dialects, pronunciations, and jargon - this slowed me down quite a few times and at some point seemed a bit overdone. I did get used to it eventually, and actually started enjoying it a bit after a while, but then another issue came up - around the last third of the book I started feeling that the main story, its culmination, was a bit too simple and flat compared to the complexity of the novel. I didn't feel this book needs so many characters, so many sources of information, and so many complications to achieve what actually happens in the end. I was wondering whether O'Connor got lost in his own over-complication of the events in this book and couldn't find his way out of it, or if he just had all these ideas he wanted to put on paper and decided to cram them all in one book.
Overall - spectacular writing from a really inspiring and creative author, but a tad over-complicated story.