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Night Boat to Tangier

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Night Boat to Tangier

By: Kevin Barry
Narrated by: Kevin Barry
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About this listen
Gloriously freewheeling – Guardian

It's a Kevin Barry novel, so the brilliance is expected; everything else is a brilliant surprise – Roddy Doyle

The gods of literature, who have so much love for Ireland, are sweet on Kevin Barry – Richard Beard

It's late one night at the Spanish port of Algeciras and two fading Irish gangsters are waiting on the boat from Tangier. A lover has been lost, a daughter has gone missing, their world has come asunder - can it be put together again?

Night Boat to Tangier is a novel drenched in sex and death and narcotics, in sudden violence and old magic, but it is obsessed, above all, with the mysteries of love. A tragicomic masterwork from a multi-award-winning writer, Night Boat to Tangier is both mordant and hilarious, lyrical yet laden with menace.
©2019 Kevin Barry (P)2019 Canongate Books Ltd Dark Humour Genre Fiction Literature & Fiction Urban Fiction Witty Heartfelt

Critic reviews

“Barry is a marvel: menacing, insistent, switching from brooding descriptions of the men’s nocturnal surroundings to their terse dialogue. The conviction with which he explores their search for Charlie’s missing daughter never fails.” (Financial Times, Audiobooks)

"A true wonder." (Max Porter)
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Ordinarily a few reviews complaining about the reader would be enough to turn me off a book given some of the shockers on audible. As this was read by the author I decided it might be worth giving it a chance and was very glad I did.

The reading, variously critiqued as being wrongly or too slowly paced, holds the key to the form of the book (only evident when you see it in print) the conversations are written out like a play text, often with line gaps inbetween. Setting comparisons to Samuel Beckett aside I'd contend that there are other literary influences at work here, namely Harold Pinter who famously used pauses to say as much as speech. (Once you've thought of Pinter it's hard not to think of Martin McDonaghs re-working of Pinter in the film In Bruges as being influential here too).

This opens up the depths of this text which reveals itself in hints and says as much in omission as inclusion. When it offers descriptions they are startling beautiful, Barry's writing on weather is superlative.The whole book is a rich pleasure to read and lingers in the mind afterwards. I fully intend to revisit this for a closer reading as I cannot shake the feeling that Charlie and Maurice are two sides of the same man.

Excellent narration of a hugely enjoyable book.

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I found Beatlebone wonderful so I didn't hesitate to get this book. And what a treat it is. I usually like a long listen, and this is very short, but deliciously rich. Barry's voice is wonderful - I live in Ireland and love every version of the accent, from Belfast to Cork, from Dublin to Leitrim (my home ground). His language is glorious: we know these men, the way their lives are tangled together, their strange histories, the choices that have led them to be waiting for the boat from Tangier. I loved every moment, heart-breaking, funny, dark and authentic. The true bliss of the early days of opiate addiction - with it's slippery slide down into the drowning endless need was amazingly well portrayed. These two men are so frightening and yet so fragile. This is a truly beautiful book, narrated to perfection. I will be listening again.

Waiting with the Boys

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Don't read you own prose like you are having an orgasm. Do me a voice or two (it gets dull listening to one tone all day). Don't take poetic licence and throw fcuks in there by the truck load to dress down the colourful prose when you're writing in 3rd person POV. Don't give me it's authentic Ireland.

I felt the Book is about the authors ability to write rather than telling us a story. I was asking myself if Kevin Barry is that smart kid I knew from school who thought intelligence was soft so he cursed a lot and smoked?

STORY IS KING. Where is the story? Two old men talk about the good old bad days while hoping to bump into the MC's estranged daughter. That's it! The odd flashback I don't mind, but a story inside a (non)stort? No thanks.

I hope the critical acclaim doesn't send Barry's ego into another Barry world. But something tells me that boat has sailed.

Self indulgent writer with flashes of brilliance

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Switched between reading and listening and I have to say the reader ruined it for me. the pacing was wrong and the prosody sometimes hysterical. good story. probably shouldn't win the Booker. definite influences from Beckett (Godot) and some brilliant single lines ("there wasn't a sparrow safe for miles"). Barry has a brilliant comic sense. But, it is not matched by his darkness.

Better read than listen

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I should have read this rather than listened.
Enjoyed the story, the sentiment and the flowery blarney.

The port of UHOA!

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