Red Sky in Morning

July 8, 2013
The plot line of this rewarding debut has the feel of a classic American western: in 1832, Coll Coyle kills a powerful local landowner, then flees in fear of frontier justice at the hands of the landlord’s sadistic henchman, John Faller. But Lynch, an Irish writer living in Dublin, has set his story not west of the Mississippi, but in the west of Ireland (a rural area in County Donegal). Coyle leaves his wife and daughter behind and eventually strikes out for America, Faller hot on his heels. Coyle’s sick with fever (pneumonia, or possibly consumption) and endures a frightening, brutal transatlantic passage, but eventually lands in Philadelphia, where he joins other immigrants as laborers on “a new kind of engineering. A locomotive line.” This grim story gets grimmer: his co-workers are dying of cholera, and Faller tracks Coyle down in America as this very literary book moves toward its violent climax. Lynch’s prose is sharply observed, and his themes are elemental and powerful: the violence of existence, the illusion of choice in a fatalistic universe. People, says Faller, “are animals, brutes, blind and stupid.”

Starred review from October 1, 2013
A novel of great beauty and violence from Irish writer Lynch. Set in the 19th century, Lynch's narrative first takes us to Ireland and to the desperation of its poorest people. Coll Coyle has a wife and young daughter (and another child on the way) and helps out on the farm of Hamilton, a ruthless landowner who's recently informed Coll he's being evicted for no apparent reason. In a rage, Coll goes to the landowner and, during an argument, accidentally kills him. This one event sets into motion the rest of the plot, for Coll must first hide and then escape, forced against his will to leave his family. Hamilton's foreman, Faller, is relentless both in determination and in sadism, and he steps in to track down Coll. Faller tries to pry information out of Coll's brother--and we find out that being "hanged by one's thumbs" is, for Faller, not merely a turn of phrase. After a long sea voyage, Coll eventually arrives in America and finds work laying railroad track in Pennsylvania, work scarcely less exploitative and brutal than what he had been doing in Ireland. Faller, along with two creepy companions, is able to track Coll to the New World. Coll has befriended a man called The Cutter who helps him through some scrapes and narrow escapes, but eventually, the Cutter, along with a number of other men from the railroad, catches a virulent disease and dies. Despite being hunted himself, Faller continues his methodical and potentially deadly quest in search of his elusive prey. When Coll is burying the Cutter, he unwittingly provides a fitting epigraph for the novel: "The earth corrupt before him and filled with violence." Lynch's poetic prose is gorgeous. He lovingly crafts every sentence.

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September 1, 2013
The first novel by Irish author Lynch, based in part on historical events, traces the path of Coll Coyle from County Donegal to rural Pennsylvania during the late nineteenth century. By doing so, it bears comparison to Colum McCann's Transatlantic (2013). In a nasty (though civil on Coyle's part) confrontation to forestall eviction, Coll causes the death of his master, the landlord Hamilton, prompting Coll to flee. As the landlord's ruthless agents, led by the malevolent Faller, pursue Coll across the Irish countryside and, inexplicably, to America, and as they brutalize those aiding him, including his brother, Lynch creates scenes that are almost nauseatingly hateful and graphic, though rendered in startlingly beautiful prose, not unlike the themes and style of Cormac McCarthy. The transoceanic passage that Coll endures is harrowing, and the vicious and exploitative railroad labor system in America, exacerbated by a cholera outbreak, adds to the unremitting terror of his plight. This is strong stuff by a promising young author.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

June 15, 2013

"Night sky was black and then there was blood, morning crack of light on the edge of the earth." That's the opening line of Lynch's debut novel, just another substantiation of the adage that the Irish can really, really write. If Dublin-based Lynch's taut, absorbing, acerbically lyrical prose weren't enough, there's the revelatory plot. Having killed a man in 1832 County Donegal whose father is an expert tracker now bent on vengeance, Coll Coyle goes on the run--all the way to the cholera-soaked work camps of the Philadelphia railroad.

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