In the Country of the Young

This book is awesome! I have never read anything like it. The characters were interesting and well written, the plot was unlike anything I had ever read, and the details were fascinating. I feel like I am gushing, but the book left me with such a feeling of peace when I was done reading it. The story is completely fictional, but I could "see" the characters and "hear" their voices. The idea that there are people out there to help those who have died along their way is something that has interested me, even though I don't totally buy into the theory. The parts of the story with the young Oisin and his twin Nieve countered with those of Aisling and her brother are heart rending. The novel is one of a reawakening and a realization that one can overcome the losses faced in your youth. Through Aisling, Oisin is able to absolve himself of his guilt for the death of his twin, and Aisling is able to achieve the one thing she was denied while she was alive. This is a wonderful book, and I would heartily recommend it.

This vividly-told love story is so difficult to describe to others that you will find yourself simply buying copies for friends and family rather than risk spoiling the chance for them to experience the tale themselves. Lisa Carey's unpretentious writing style delivers an engrossing romance complemented by brilliant imagery. You will spend hours after reading the last page, repeating the seductive storytelling to yourself.

This book is a beautiful, melancholy flight of fancy from beginning to end. It's exhilarating the way Lisa Carey breaks the rules about what's allowed to happen in a novel. Ghosts are main characters, myths are real, communication with the dead commonplace. I read this book in one sitting--it was so bizarre I just had to keep turning the page to see what would happen next.Carey intertwines harsh reality with the magical and mythical. The details about the Irish famine, the tons of food that were exported from the country while over a million people starved to death, and the horrible conditions on board the "coffin ships" are all--sad to say--historically accurate. It may seem morbid to some, but for the ancestors of those who crossed the Atlantic in those ships--or were buried at sea along the way--the famine is a watershed event that will remain embedded in our psyche for generations, like one of Carey's characters who die but stubbornly refuse to go away.

This book was recommended to me by a friend, and I'm so glad I took her advice!! Anyone who values beautiful writing and a haunting love story would really be missing out by not reading this book. I had chills most of the way through, and was crying (on the subway, no less) when it was over. One of the best books I read in 2000, without a doubt, and I read a lot.

This gorgeous, compelling, heartfelt story is everything a novel should be. On Halloween Eve, Oisin, a middle-age recluse living on an island off the coast of Maine, finds a child ghost in his house who, at his touch, is given life. Aisling had died as a child on the shores of the island, a victim of a shipwreck and a debilitating voyage to escape the potato famine in Ireland. She awakens in Oisin his own longing for his long-dead twin sister Nieve. As Aisling grows up at a frantic rate, the two must face their pasts and origins, who they were and are, as well as the special relationship between them.If the plot sounds maudlin, the novel is anything but. In Carey's capable hands, readers are guided through the intricacies of these two lives without sentimentality or melodrama. The lyrical prose is infused with the ache of longing, and the story finds the perfect balance between the past and the present, with a fully realized nineteenth century Ireland contrasting with a contemporary Maine. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Of all the books I've read this year, this one has lingered longest in my heart.