Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

I’m perfectly happy to work hard at a book. I have no trouble if I am challenged whilst reading. But the payoff has to be worth the effort and for me it wasn’t here. The style was unnecessarily obscure, and too many questions were left unanswered with too much having to be inferred. It’s the story of a man and his estranged daughter making a road trip from England to France in a borrowed lorry whilst they take this opportunity to work through old issues and reconnect with each other. Much grief, loss and regret form the background to the narrative but I was alienated by having to work out what was happening and thus remained unengaged with any of the characters. Stylistically it got on my …..Too many sentences are truncated like this and start but never….and much of the dialogue too is clipped and……As a stylistic tic this can be effective but not when overused. Then it just becomes……The narrative is fragmented, jumping about in time and place, and the big question remained for me – why on earth was he driving this lorry with his stowaway daughter in the first place? There must be easier ways to reconnect with a loved one. As for the end of the love affair he is also trying to come to terms with, well that didn’t convince me either. So a thumbs down for me, sadly as I did feel that the conceit had potential which unfortunately wasn’t realised.

I really enjoyed my time with this book and its characters. It is a touching story both engrossing and poignant. At times i did find it hard to connect with some of the character, but this did prevent my enjoyment of the book. I would say this is a usual read, which from me is a compliment. I love the unusual, and it's good to read something outside of your normal reading pattern. This is one of those books. It is a gem and quite a find.

I would recommend it, but I would advise either a browse in a book shop or a download sample from Kindle. It a lovely journey and explorers the relationship between father and daughter. Would love to read more from the authour.

A strange, confusing and depressing book that I read as though I was in fog, never really getting to grips with the plot. It meanders and drifts through the characters, shifting between the past, the near past and the present, and from place to place, as Paddy drives the lorry from England down to the south of France. I was often not sure what was happening, when or where it was happening and to whom it was happening. It’s a stream of consciousness, as the various characters move in and out of focus.

There were times when I wondered why I was reading this, it was like a dream where the scenes move randomly through a number of sequences, and you wake up with that fearful feeling that something dreadful has been going on inside your head that was disturbing, and unsettling. There’s a sense of timelessness and of detachment from the day to day reality – they are not in the world. And yet I was compelled to read on, if only just to get to the end and see if my suspicions about what had actually happened were right. They were, although there is a little twist at the very end that I hadn’t expected.

The fairy tale of Oisin, a tale Paddy tells his daughter, interests me. Oisin was a warrior who fell in love with a fairy named Niamh. He takes her home to Tir na nOg, where they will stay forever young, but he can never return home. After three years he is homesick and returns on a magic horse, on the condition that he has to stay on the horse on pain of death. But three hundred years have actually gone by, not three, and everyone he knew is dead. He meets an old man who knew his father and moving to help him he slips off the horse, touches the ground and dies in an instant. He repeats this story several times to his daughter as they travel through France. It links with Tir na nOg, the name of his family home, now neglected and empty after his mother’s death three years earlier.

This is not an easy read, as you have to concentrate on all the different strands. Paddy’s life is a complete mess, he has lost everything: his family, his home and his sense of belonging. He looks back at the broken relationships with his parents, his brother, ex-wife, daughter, and ex-lover. It’s told in fragments and you have to read between the lines to understand it. I didn’t enjoy the book, and found it difficult to follow. It is too vague, and as soon as I thought I’d begun to understand it, it drifted away into obscurity. and I was left floundering.

My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for my advance review copy.

Intrigued by the premise of this book I started the reading experience hoping for something powerful and immersive. Unfortunately this did not hit the mark, I found it hard to connect with the characters and the style of writing (lack of punctuation etc.) did not help to carry the story.

I would definitely pick up another work by the author but sadly this one was not for me.

“Existence is elsewhere and you can hear it”

In We Are Not In The World we follow the protagonist Paddy as he smuggles his daughter with him on a road trip through Ireland, England and France. Paddy is not a regular truck driver and he sets off on a hallucinating journey through a hellish highway landscape punctuated by checks with a suspicious supervisor. But being on the road is always somewhat redemptive, and father and daughter -- with little to lose after devastating love stories -- try to reconstruct their broken relationship.

It turns out to be a visceral journey backwards through memory, as Paddy revisits key moments in his life: his marriage, a family in which he was always the lesser brother and an all-consuming, devastating love affair with a married woman that led him to neglect his daughter. O’Callaghan’s capacity to capture the intensity of experience is breath-taking and is evident in the descriptions of both the raw, vivid Polaroid-like memories and the dilapidated peripheries Paddy travels through. It is also an interesting retelling of the myth of Tír na nÓg, which runs through the narration, about what happens when get back to reality after being in a land of dream.

The mixture of road novel, mythology, Dostoyevskyan dreamer character and Kevin Barry-ish characterization makes for an intense, compelling novel brimming with longing, regret and hope. O’Callaghan’s bravura in mastering dialogue and point of view is impressive. It can account for a challenging reading experience due to the allusiveness in dialogues and shifting perspectives, but in my case it was also a truly rewarding read which has left an indelible impression.


I am grateful to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review

I read a different book by this author a few years ago and I really liked it ("Nothing on Earth") but I just don't have the patience for this kind of very clipped quotation-mark-free writing at the moment - example:

Roger Wilco, she says. Six days?

Six days minimum.

Meaning?

We may investigate the possibility of stringing it out. Not a dicky bird.

Seriously? she says. She stares bewildered into middle distance. Who am I gonna tell?

Your mom?

You really worry me, she says quietly. You know that?

I know nothing.


It's a touching story, a lorry driver is travelling between England and France grieving the end of a relationship. His daughter travels with him, she is unkempt and troubled, a young woman in her twenties that is not supposed to be with him. I just found it incredibly hard to care about either of them, I didn't have a clue what they were talking about half the time and I don't have the concentration needed for something written in this style at the moment. I may go back to it eventually but for now, it requires a level of attention that I unfortunately do not have.

There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

Irish poet Conor O'Callaghan surprised reviewers with his deftness of narrative when he published his debut novel 'Nothing on Earth' a few years ago. Here, he returns to fiction once again and is no less controlled. 'We are not in the World' is taut, weird, sly and touching and marks Conor O'Callaghan out as a novelist in the same bracket as skilled contemporaries like Donal Ryan.

This novel follows Paddy and his troubled daughter Kitty as they travel across France in a haulage lorry. It deals with themes of regret, grief, love and relationships through scenes from Paddy’s life.

It’s a beautifully written and unconventional novel that benefits from close reading and an open mind. I found it to be incredibly moving and it’s a book that will stay with me for a long time.

Ooh this was really something. It's definitely a novel you have to lock into and has a very liminal space feel to it. It's hard to stay grounded in the story because of all of the different elements and how it's structured, but it's a really affecting and engrossing story.

One of the best things about this novel is its title. I am not being facetious. It sums up, in a brief poetic phrase, the predicament of its cast of characters, and, with each new chapter, it assumes additional layers of meaning.

The protagonist of the novel is Paddy, an Irishman. Having lived for several years in America with his wife and daughter, he relocates to England, closer to home, yet not quite. Like him, his daughter Kitty seems to live a displaced existence. In her native country, she is considered “foreign” due to her Irish roots. However, when she starts college in Dublin, she is even more of an outsider. A love affair gone horribly wrong turns her “homecoming” into a nightmare.

We are not in the World is a road novel of sorts. When we first meet Paddy, he is at a steering wheel of a haulage truck, crossing from England into France. Like his daughter, love has caused him pain, and he is at the tail end of a painful extramarital relationship. In a bid to escape – physically and mentally – he unearths a truck driver’s licence which he has never previously used and offers to cover for Howard, a terminally ill friend who works as a driver for the mysterious and slightly unsettling boss Carl. Carl is wary of his atypical recruit and he has reason to be. Indeed, Paddy has some tricks up his sleeve. He smuggles with him on the trip his daughter Kitty, in a desperate bid to rebuild a relationship which might cure her after the trauma she recently went through.

The endless motorways, the refuelling stations where Paddy (occasionally) meets Carl for instructions, the strange fellowship of truck drivers to which Paddy never belongs… they are also “not in the world”, a sort of no-man’s land. The driver’s cabin – in which Paddy traverses this “other world” – serves as the backdrop to the witty, bittersweet exchanges between father and daughter. Gradually, events from their past come into focus, and we understand the scars they carry.

The “French” chapters alternate with segments narrated in the second person, describing the torrid love affair from which Paddy has just emerged. This parallel story is told in inverse chronological order, such that we first witness the disintegration of the relationship and move back to its tentative, initial stages.

What links the two narratives is a folktale which Paddy recounts to both his daughter and his lover – the story of the Irish warrior Oisín. Oisín falls in love with Niamh, princess of the “Land of Eternal Youth” (Tír na nÓg) Oisín is gifted immortality, but misses his homeland and kin. Niamh sends him back on a magical horse, warning him that he should never dismount. Tragically, he slips off the beast and dies. Elements of the myth are reworked into the novel, sometimes in ways which are not immediately obvious. For instance, Carl provides Paddy with doctored tachographs, enabling him to spend longer stretches on the road than allowed by the law. Again, there is this sense of stepping out of time and out of reality, like Oisín’s three hundred years in Tír na nÓg.

This liminal existence appears to extend to the character’s thoughts, which teeter on the threshold between silence and speech. When Paddy’s lover first meets him during an interview, she almost immediately finds herself indulging in erotic fantasies:

“Would the candidate care to lick your throat?...” The room exploded. You had a split second of panic where it seemed as if you actually might have blurted that out loud. It was, in the end, something funny someone else said.

Similarly, Paddy often finds himself wondering whether he has said something out loud:

There are certain thoughts I can’t think now, for fear of being overheard.

This is a defining aspect of the novel. It is also one which initially irritated me and almost put me off the book. I must admit I found the constant switch between monologue and dialogue and the sometimes-half-expressed thoughts confusing. I had to make a considerable effort to follow who was saying what and, on top of that, the segments in second-person narration, which I tend to find artificial, provided little respite.

But believe me, it was worth it. Because it is only when the novel reaches its emotionally shattering climax that one can step back and watch, awestruck, as all the elements of the novel reassemble into one, impressive whole.

4.5*

I was intrigued by the premise but somehow it didn’t work for me. The characters were not quite right. Sorry

It's a novel full of heart and strength, while being so open and vulnerable about the flaws we all possess. A thoroughly honest and evocative book.

EXCERPT: Whither the plan, big guy?

She knows I hate her calling me that. I won't rise to her bait.

Short term? We wend our merry way out of this particular circle of hell, ideally without being stopped. Thereafter we hit the northern rim of Paris before sundown, check in with Carl at some pre-ordained routier. Thereafter egg, chips, bed. Long term? The two of us on the road, with only the occasional incoming or outgoing text to maintain radio contact and to stave off all search parties.

Roger Wilco, she says. Six days?

Six days minimum.

Meaning?

We may investigate the possibility of stringing it out. Not a dicky bird.

Seriously? she says. She stares bewildered into middle distance. Who am I gonna tell?

Your mom?

You really worry me, she says quietly. You know that?

I know nothing.

ABOUT THIS BOOK: Heartbroken after a long, painful love affair, a man drives a haulage lorry from England to France. Travelling with him is a secret passenger - his daughter. Twenty-something, unkempt, off the rails.
With a week on the road together, father and daughter must restore themselves and each other, and repair a relationship that is at once fiercely loving and deeply scarred.
As they journey south, down the motorways, through the service stations, a devastating picture reveals itself: a story of grief, of shame, and of love in all its complex, dark and glorious manifestations.

MY THOUGHTS: I made the comment, part way through We Are Not In The World by Connor O'Callaghan, that this is an incredibly strange book, but equally compelling. As the novel progresses and the purpose of the journey becomes clearer, it becomes a little less strange, but no less compelling.

This is not an easy read. O'Callaghan makes the reader work for his enjoyment. The narrative meanders backwards and forwards in time seemingly randomly and totally without warning. It is often difficult to tell what is happening to whom. It can be like trying to watch a drive-in movie in shifting fog. Just when you think you have a handle on something, that you are able to grip something solid, it all shifts, and you are once again quite unsure of that of which you were absolutely sure only moments ago. And yet, it is quite beautiful. I could no more have stopped reading than not have preordered the new Stephen King.

Paddy (NOT Pat) has grown up the elder son in a dysfunctional family. His father is dead, and his younger brother, Art, named for his father- usually the privilege that falls to the eldest- is educated at his father's old boarding school. Paddy basically brings himself up, his mother spending her days smoking and drinking whisky in front of an endless stream of old movies on the TV. And yet, it is after his mother that Paddy names his daughter, Kitty. And Art, the distant younger brother, is her godfather. She calls him The Godfather, and he calls her Madam. They are close. He takes her under his wing when Paddy's marriage implodes.

This is a novel of grief and loss, a broken marriage, a love affair, family relationships, regrets and aspirations, and 'the thing we never mention.' It is this thing that leads to the road trip.

Not everyone will love this book. I do.

❤❤❤❤.5

#WeAreNotInTheWorld #NetGalley

Time does what time does best. It passes.

She tells me, with all the joie de vivre of a stoned hippopotamus, how moved or excited she is.

The lyrics seem to detach themselves miraculously from any meaning and acquire, in fragrant humidity, all the sheen and substance of bubbles blown by a child in a suburban garden.

So much of love is how another sees you.

Happiness comes and goes. It tends not to hang around. Unhappiness has a habit of outstaying its welcome.

THE AUTHOR: Connor O'Callaghan is originally from Dundalk, and now divides his time between Dublin and the North of England.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Random House UK, Transworld, Doubleday via NetGalley for providing a digital ARC of We Are Not In The World by Connor O'Callaghan for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review and others are also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

We Are Not in the World is a haunting, poetic and highly original story of a father and daughter travelling across England and France in a haulage truck, and discovering more about their relationship and past in all its raw candour. A story that is deeply emotional and vividly brought to life through fragmented characters and unsettling situations. “Happiness comes and goes. It tends not to hang around. Unhappiness has a habit of outstaying its welcome.”

Paddy has found himself leasing a truck from a friend, Howard, although his supervisor, Carl, remains in control of the operational side of the haulage contracts and the meet points on the trip which Carl is also making. Paddy picks his estranged daughter, Kitty, up from a Dublin hospital and hides her in the cab as they cross on the ferries between Ireland, England and France. Kitty, emaciated, bruised and wearing a stolen mink coat remains hidden at cafes and anywhere Paddy may know someone. He certainly keeps her hidden from Carl and his prying. Paddy wants to build a relationship with his daughter and ensure, this time, that he gives everything he can and that it endures forever. There is no doubt they love each other, although their interactions are brutally honest and searching.

Paddy often tells Kitty the Irish folklore tale of Oisín and Tír na nÓg, where Oisín is a great Irish warrior who falls in love with Niamh (a princess of the mythical Tír na nÓg – ‘Land of Eternal Youth’). Niamh takes him to Tír na nÓg to live forever young but after a while, Oisín gets homesick and wants to see his family, friends and Ireland again. Niamh gives Oisín a magical horse that he must never dismount. Three hundred years have passed and everyone he knew is dead but as he travels the countryside he tries to help a group of men move rocks and slips off his horse and lands on the ground, only to age immediately by the three hundred years and soon die. This story is repeated and referenced several times, forging a link between the myth and Paddy’s adventure on several levels. Paddy wants to keep his daughter close to him as they travel this private journey together.

“This is it all right. This is the place Carl said to be. This is the correct hour and the correct day. It’s just that I am, I realize only now, a fortnight late. We have lived in the Land of Youth. We’ve lost all track of. Time? Time passes. Or rather, this is what passes for time. We are not in the world exactly. This is more the future we return to, its municipal spaces derelict or in some limbo of sublime incompletion. Nobody remembers us. There’s nobody to remember. All old comrades, the ancient order, have fallen from memory into myth. The saddle is sliding off. We’re sliding off with it and can’t stop time happening.”

Conor O’Callaghan creates a sense of foreboding that things are not going to end well and the insights into the relationship between Paddy and Kitty is beautifully told with flashbacks that add depth to them and other characters. The broken and uncomfortable relationships Paddy has with everyone in his past, including his brother and mother are perfectly reinforced with the unique narrative style of no punctuation, broken dialogue and clipped sentences.

The writing style takes a little bit of readjustment and concentration to appreciate its flow and how creative and exciting it is, although I feel this is an issue. Fans of Kevin Barry’s ‘Night Boat to Tangiers’ will see similar expressions of style and reflective tones. I would like to thank Doubleday Books and NetGalley for providing me with a free ARC copy in return for an honest review.

Conor O'Callaghan's quintessentially Irish piece of literary fiction is beautifully written, lyrical and unsettling in its exploration of human frailties, family, love, loss, grief, regrets, emotional heartbreak and ghosts. Paddy has grown up in Ireland, and has acquired a haulage truck from a dying Howard, driving from England to France, embarking on a road trip, smuggling his daughter, Kitty, named after his mother, on board. Divorced, with a recent love affair with a married woman that has come to a dead end, Paddy's mother has been dead for 3 years. He has picked up Kitty from a Dublin hospital, after an estrangement, the two are looking to rebuild their broken relationship on their trip through France. With her shaved head, her plastic wrist tag and stolen mink coat, the fragile and troubled Kitty is painfully thin, the fierce love between her and Paddy shines through amidst the emotional scars of bitterness, their niggles with each other, and their fears and insecurities.

The narrative meanders through the nooks and crannies of Paddy's past life, his childhood, his core relationship with his mother, through their oedipal years, his distant relationship with Art, the Godfather and his brother, resentful of his strong relationship with his daughter, the lack of welcome to be found at home and Ireland, his affair with his married lover, he is gripped and haunted by a homesickness that never leaves him, with its metaphorical echoes of the Irish folktale of Tir na nOg. Happiness comes and goes, whilst unhappiness has a habit of outstaying its welcome. Paddy and Kitty feel like someone's imaginary friend as they reflect on their lives. They are not in the world, barely present ghosts in their own lives, a recurring theme, nobody remembers them and there is nobody for them to remember.

This novel is unlikely to appeal to some readers, the scenes from Paddy's life are initially opaque, it can be tricky to decipher what is happening and who is who, presenting like illusory realities frayed at the edges, in a timeless non-linear narrative. O'Callaghan's storytelling feel like scenes that slowly solidified into a impressionistic pieces of art that then proceed to fade away to be replaced by another scene from Paddy's life. A sinister edge is added to the eerie and disturbing tale with the presence of the controlling Carl. This stellar novel of all that it is to be human, whilst retaining its own imaginative originality, strongly reminded me of Kevin Barry's Night Boat to Tangier. Highly recommended to fans of Irish literary fiction. Many thanks to Random House Transworld for an ARC.

'We are not in the world exactly. This is more the future we return to, its municipal spaces derelict or in some limbo of sublime incompletion. Nobody remembers us. There's nobody to remember. All old comrades, the ancient order, have fallen from memory into myth. The saddle is sliding off. We're sliding off with it and can't stop time happening.'

What is it with the Irish and this urge to write books or plays full of dialogue between two people? It's confessional, almost, a moment of connection between people. Beckett, obviously, but I came to this after lauding last year's 'Night Boat to Tangier' by Kevin Barry. So I worried that this might pale by comparison. There is no need to worry, however, for Conor O'Callaghan has penned a work of quietly devastating wonder that it very much stands on its own two feet.

Paddy, taking advantage of a friend's incapacity, resuscitates his old HGV licence and is employed by the mysterious Carl to drive down through France, dropping off and collecting cargo on the way. He sneaks his daughter into the cab with him and together, as they drive, they engage in father-daughter banter. One subject remains off-limits, however, casting a shadow over their relationship. Interspersed with these current events is the story of Paddy's married lover, and how their relationship has developed over time. As time moves forward, these chapters go back further in time, to the beginning and how they met. What also emerges is the story of Paddy's relationship with his late mother Kitty (also the name of his daughter) and his brother Arthur (or Art, named after their father). At stake is the sale of the family home, Tír na nÓg (meaning the Land of Youth), which Art is trying to get rid of as beneficiary of the estate.

Myth-making and family history, a sense of belonging, and a sense of exile and journey: these are classic motifs of Irish literature and O'Callaghan weaves a complex, challenging story. Conversations are half-intuited, shadowy figures occupy the margins of the stories that are told and, as Paddy's journey progresses, we realise that his grasp on time and reality are less assured than he thinks. It's impossible to go into some of the plot details without slamming a 'spoiler alert' over it, so just go with it and let the gaps and absences take you on the journey.

At times the prose is sublime and deeply moving. There is the sense of an elegy, interspersed with typical Irish wit, but above all this is a literal and metaphorical journey, Paddy's story and the Oisín myth intertwined:

'I've lived my adult life with this floor of underlying homesickness. Not for our mother, nor the seascape in which we grew up, nor any mythical golden age. It's more a homesickness born of absence, of having no home to yearn to revisit.'

I loved this. It is a moving, lyrical testament to home, family and love. The writing is just wonderful and the ending... desperately sad, but with just a hint of hope for the future. Yes, it is hard work at times to follow the dialogue or work out exactly what is going on, but it will reward a willing reader with an open mind and O'Callaghan has delivered a stunning novel. I can't not give it 5 stars. Sublime.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

We Are Not in the World sees Paddy driving a lorry through France. Unbeknownst to his overseer, Paddy’s daughter, Kitty, goes along for the ride, hiding in the back when necessary.

I really enjoyed Paddy and Kitty’s relationship. From the start, their conversations are amusing and endearing, and I loved the banter between them. It’s clear that Kitty has experienced some trauma, and this is alluded to throughout with small hints given before the details are revealed in full later in the novel. Paddy is careful never to refer to it directly, but shows great tenderness in his own way, letting her have the last word and get her own way.

I did find the style of the novel a little difficult to engage with at times, and I expect that this is one that won’t appeal to all readers. There is a lot of ambiguity throughout – it’s sometimes unclear who is speaking, and the novel jumps back and forth in time without warning. That said, once I reached the end, I did understand the reasons for some of the vagueness I’d felt throughout.

We Are Not in the World is a novel about loss, grief, and relationships of all kinds – sibling, parent and child, as well as that between lovers – and while I think there’s a compelling narrative here, I’m sorry to say that the style of it just wasn’t for me.

Greif and regret on the road.

A haulier drives south through France, carrying a secret passenger, his estranged daughter. Over the course of their journey they attempt to heal the hurt.

O’Callaghan is reticent with detail, making the reader work hard. His narrative style of abbreviated dialogue and blurring memories with the present takes some getting used to. In particular, the truncated dialogue initially feels affected. But, as the journey progresses, the portrayal of missed opportunities turns poignant.

Ultimately, I failed to connect with the characters.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers Doubleday, for the ARC.