Review - Dublin Bay by John Patrick

James is a seventeen-year-old working-class Irish man just out of school and looking for his first job. He's picking mussels from Dublin Bay one day to feed his family when he spots another young man his age on the dock. James is mesmerized by the blond youth, Otto, who also seems attracted to James. Otto is German, and he and his father are on the dock seeing off Otto's mother. It's 1939, and what will become World War II is just starting in earnest. Otto makes his father buy the mussels from James, and before he knows it, James and his sister Bella are employed by Otto's father to take care of their home. Otto and James soon become more than friends and are committed to finding a way to be together. As if their relationship weren't dangerous enough, the two young men do what they can to help refugees from Nazi Germany. It's a course of action that could get the two killed.

Although James and Otto are both only seventeen when the story starts, I wouldn't classify this as a “Young Adult” book. The themes are very adult in nature, and the times regarded the boys more as adults. Coming-of-age also doesn't quite fit the bill either. James does undergo quite a bit of self-realization through the two years covered by the book, but it's the type of thing that isn't necessarily specific to young people. Some people never figure it out.

The story is told entirely from James' point of view. He only has what Americans would consider a high school education, but he is definitely intelligent and highly resourceful. His business success may seem a little too good to be true, but we have many examples today of successful teenage entrepreneurs. In the pre-war setting of this story, it was a more common expectation that a man was to be established in a career before he was twenty, so his “business” is plausible if a little bit of a stretch.

Otto and James make a very complementary couple. Otto is very much the stereotypical German youth when James meets him, but James helps him to see what is really happening. For his part, Otto – and his American tutor – open James' eyes to the world beyond the strict Irish Catholic morals he was raised in.

This book is much more than a “simple” romance. It encompasses the full development of a complex relationship between James and Otto, as well as their circle of friends. James' sister, Bella, plays a key role that also highlights the hypocritical attitudes about women of the time. The story also provides a light-handed observation about how fascism takes hold in a supposedly enlightened society.

“Dublin Bay” is available from Smashwords and Amazon (commissionable link).