Rating: 
Summary: Extraordinary!
Review: A stunning work of art. The author uses the intertwined lives of several characters to convey the tragedy of the Irish famine and the human cost of migration, and does so in glorious prose.I've never read a more moving evocation of the Irish famine, which is the book's central focus. But this is also a tale about the Irish diaspora. O'Connor strips that event of romance of hindsight and conveys the pain and suffering that accompanied the emigrants on their journey. As a writer, I'm impressed by the book's complex structure; it's not easy to pull off these shifting points-of-view, but O'Connor does so with ease and grace. This is a beautifully written novel and a marvelous accomplishment.
Rating: 
Summary: Appraisal
Review: An excellent book which concentrates on the fickleties of the human condition in all it's grotesque forms. Though it will undoubtably have mass appeal to the faux Irish-American readership through it's account of the potato famine-an entirely natural disaster exaserbated by local land owners who wanted the people off the land-this is a book about the stark realities of what we all,as humans are capable of...it could just have easily have been set in any one of a hundred situations and has no heros or villains-just real characters we can all emphathise with.
Rating:
Summary: Riveting!
Review: Despite being depressing and full of dead babies and such! - this book captures the humanity behind the headlines of the Irish famine. Not for the light hearted or for reading on vacation - but unquestionably a story told by a talented writer, a qualified guide who leads the way through his intricate tale so you keep reading regardless.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Book!
Review: Do not miss out of this supurbly written book.
I found myself hating the characters that i thought i loved, and felt so much compassion for those i thought would not deserve any. A true classic that will be a permanaent part of my historical collection.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Nice Surprise
Review: I had fininshed the two books I brought with me on vacation, and I still had a day and a flight home to fill. I went to the "book swap" at the towel hut, and decided on "Star of the Sea". I expected that I would get what I paid for, and that I could always come back and swap it again if I didn't like it. What a nice surprise to find a well-written, intelligent, and totally captivating story.
I will not bother to recap the characters and basic plot for you - you can read that in other reviews or the synopsis. What I will tell you is that Mr. O'Connor is a superb story teller. He switches from Mulvey to Merredith to the Captain to Dixon, as well as others, with ease. Each speaker advances the tale of all while you are captivated with details of the individual.
I felt the bleakness of the times as well as the ocean voyage. O'Connor's book is well researched and provides the reader with accurate images of a disastrous time in history.
The writing itself reminds me of Dickens or Bronte, but not quite as difficult to read. This is just a very clever book, one that I would recommend to anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Ok, but not great
Review: I picked up this book because is was on the Wall Street Journal's list of summer books. And while I find a lot of the WSJ recommendations good, I had to disagree with this one. Although the author has come up with a great plot, the telling of it leaves something to be desired, at least as a summer read is concerned. The author does well slowing revealing the pasts of the central characters - the characters are all intertwined in ways that they know and don't, and the setting of Ireland and a transatlantic boat trip are unusual ones. But this wasn't an easy book to read, with the author trying to go for an authentic mid-1800 tone. The language was difficult to digest while sitting by the pool in the hot sun. In a nutshell: story good, ease of readability bad. Bangkok 8 is a much better summer read.
Rating: 
Summary: It's all been done before
Review: I'm not having much luck with historical fiction of late. And I had problems with this story. There is no doubt that Joseph O'Connor is a fabulous writer, and his recreation of the 1840's is astounding. His style lends the work a sense of authenticity, reinforced by the author's intimate knowledge of the period and also his evocative, realistic prose. There was, however, wasn't much to keep me interested in this book, at least to read it until the end. The novel starts off brilliantly with a wonderful depiction of the first night on the ship. O'Connor's vivid descriptions and use of metaphor are astounding, but the rest of the book just doesn't live up to the wonderful atmosphere that he created in his first chapter. I found the characters to be typical historical stock stereotypes with a kind of one dimensionality that I found frustrating -
The upper class blustery Lord Merridith, the beautiful, whimsical Mary Duane, and the angst ridden Pius Mulvey. I can appreciate the way O'Connor weaves the back stories of these characters into the narrative, but to me the story kept deviating from life on the ship; and I wanted to get back to what was happening on the voyage. The descriptions of the peasants in steerage were suitably horrific and O'Connor really presented a realistic account of what it would have been like to travel to the New World in such conditions. He also presents a vivid account of the poverty and starvation that existed in Ireland at the time. But this has been covered so much in other fiction and also in popular movies such as Gangs of New York. Perhaps I need to give this book another try at a later date or maybe just give up reading historical fiction all together.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've read in a long time!
Review: 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. --- Reviewed by Kate Ayers
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't read the words fast enough
Review: Joseph O'Connor puts you right there with the people who have to starve, freeze, and suffer things many people will never know. My heart was breaking when he discribed what family members did to a loved one when they had to dump the body overboard so it would not be recognized should the body be found back in Ireland, and the family suffer the stigma of shame...And the workhouse...and the conditions on the ship in steerage... I highly recommend this wonderfully discriptive book that takes place during the Famine, but is about the lives behind it, not just the event itself.
Rating:
Summary: worth reading
Review: O'Connor has written a compulsively readable book. Common Enough. Much rarer, it is also skillfully written, well plotted and satisfying. Under the guise of 'The Star of the Sea' O'Connor brings together a ship load of emmigrants all seeking to escape the desperate famine of Ireland in the 1840's. Most novels, most non-fiction, that deals with the Great Famine tends to examine England's role in Ireland's tragedy. O'Connor reclaims the disaster through an entirely Irish focus. Our narrators come from all stratas of Irish society, Lords and Ladies, Captains and Crew, Doctors and Maids, and the great mass in steerage, offering up new dead at the end of every day at sea. By weaving together the lives of men and women from the disparate classes, O'Connor creates a tense forum of responsibility and fate that powers an extremely strong narrative towards a murderous climax.
| 
