In the bitter winter of 1847, a ship named Star of the Sea
sails from Ireland, bound for New York. It is a miserable November,
the cold seeming worse because of the Great Famine that has
stricken the country. Thousands are dying from starvation and
disease. Thousands are fleeing, after selling everything they owned
to buy passage to America. And thousands are perishing in the
attempt. Joseph O'Connor tackles a tragedy too long ignored. He
turns the writing over to G. Grantley Dixon, an American journalist
traveling home to Manhattan on the Star. Thus the story
feels more authentic, as Dixon uses excerpts from the captain's log
and bits and pieces from his own unpublished novel, along with
other similarly clever literary devices. We join Dixon and other
first class travelers aboard the Star, a ship with a dank
hold overfull of steerage passengers with little choice but to bear
the wretched filth --- and often too weak to care.

O'Connor has created some wholly unlovable characters. A notable
few of the cast are brilliantly moral, despite overpoweringly
desperate conditions in the midst of an historical bleakness. Lord
Kingscourt, sailing with his wife and two sons, comes on as a quite
likable fellow at first, a fellow fallen on hard times of his own
--- and hard times of his own making. As you get to know him, his
darker side slowly emerges. I finally found myself nearly devoid of
sympathy for this errant soul. But Lord Kingscourt is a product of
his past and his choices, as indeed we all are. He fell in love
with the wrong woman and spent his life in marital misery. Mary
Duane, his children's nanny --- and the object of his desire ---
sees things from a different viewpoint. She lost a husband and a
child, and now she does what she must to survive. Lurking in the
corridors, on the decks and in the hold is the Ghost, Pius Mulvey,
a murderous prison escapee with a plan for assassination aboard the
ship. As the Star sails, Lord Merridith, his wife Laura,
Mary Duane and the despicable Pius Mulvey are profiled.

Everywhere in this novel are the stark reminders of the chasm
between classes. The present action takes place onboard the ship
bound for America with her starving and diseased, but hopeful,
cargo. Unfortunately, many of the steerage passengers, carried
below decks in the frigid hold with clogged toilets and stinking
blankets, will not make the journey alive, much to the good
captain's sorrow. Meanwhile, in First Class, the tables are set
with fine cutlery, the wine is abundant, and the beds in the
private cabins are warm and snug.

I am a week late with my review of this book because I just didn't
want it to be finished. I love to savor a good book, but this one
gets inside your soul. There is so much going on --- injustices
that evoke a sense of outrage, a dose of history (with a few
authorial liberties taken), secrets revealed right and left about
the characters, and a few famous ones, like Charles Dickens,
wandering onto the page now and then --- that it helps to put it
down and take a while to ponder O'Connor's message.

This is one of the best books I've read in a long time, written
with the musical lilt of the Irish and a hint of the Erin
impishness. O'Connor didn't simply write this book --- he
choreographed it.