This Is the Way

Irish writer Corbett's second novel introduces Anthony Sonaghan, a member of Ireland's travelling%E2%80%94or gypsy%E2%80%94community. Anthony is "[lying] low for a time" in Dublin, amongst the "settled people." What he's hiding from is a long history of bad blood between the two ruling travelling families, the Sonaghans and the Gillaroos, a history which culminated in his brother's recent suicide. In Dublin, Anthony meets Judith Neill, a librarian, who gives him a notebook and encourages him to write down his family history. Though Judith genuinely admires Anthony as representative of a vanishing culture in need of preservation, when she invites him and his uncle Arthur, who has come to live with him, to her home in a posh part of town, they feel patronized by her intellectual friends and she discovers, just like many before her, that there are consequences to crossing a Sonaghan. Uncle Arthur is present for much of the novel, though he does little to illuminate Anthony's character or drive the narrative forward, which gives it a certain inertia at times. But this book is about voice, and Corbett is brilliant at creating an utterly original%E2%80%94and beautiful%E2%80%94language to portray this young man's alienation from the world. An inventive and beguiling book. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Associates. (Mar.)