Thanks to Mercier Press/BooksGoSocial and NetGalley for this ARC of Theo Dorgan's 'Camarade.'

I'm very aware of Theo Dorgan as a poet so was intrigued to read his prose and wasn't disappointed.

The twin-timeline story of a young man who abandoned late 1950s/early 1960s Cork in Ireland for Paris in the wake of a hasty act of revenge. His grandfather, a revered veteran of the Irish War of Independence, the Spanish Civil War, and the French Resistance of World War II used his contacts to spirit him out of the country and set him up with his former comrades in Paris where, ultimately, he would establish a life and a purpose (though the purpose is sometimes ambiguous, even to him).

We learn all of this as the older Joseph starts to write his life story at the prompting of Vincent, a young Franco-Algerian man with high aspirations and with whom he'd become acquainted and developed a close bond.

I shouldn't be surprised, given the quality of Dorgan's poetry, but this is beautifully written. I took longer than I usually would to read a book of this length because I was savoring it and rereading certain lines. Really lovely - contemplative, philosophical, wonderfully descriptive of time, place, and people and with lots to learn about revolution and resistance throughout 20th century Europe. There's a bit too much of people instinctively knowing what the other person's thinking or being able to read minute changes to facial expressions throughout the book which seems to serve as a means of exposition and moving things on, but that's not too distracting.