Outstanding. Devastating, comic and heartbreaking. Certainly one of the best books I have read in a long time.

Written in a dense literary style, this serious novel of the American Indian and Civil Wars is very well crafted but not very entertaining. The two main characters, an unlikely pair of adorable cross-dressing homosexual cowboys, passively witness countless tragedies through the early American wars.

Thomas McNulty , aged barely 17 , flees the Irish famine for the USA. In the 1850's, he joins the US Army , fighting in the Indian Wars- the Sioux and Yurok . With his brother in arms, John Cole, he goes on to join the Civil War. In between battles scenes is the touching story of two young men, and the makeshift family that they create with a young Sioux girl .

The battle scenes far outweighed the more interesting and touching story of Thomas, John and young Winona. The three led an unconventional life, which was by far the more interesting part of the book for me. I suppose I learned some details of the American Indian Wars as well as the Civil War, but overall, this was not the book for me.

long listed for the Mann Booker 2017 it is a spare story about Thomas McNulty an Irish emigrant from the great hunger making his way in the American frontier. Every sentence is astonishing, not a wasted word. In some ways its cometmplates the same theme as Pauline' Jilette's News of the World, i.e. what makes a family, how does one make a life after horrific experiences. Two men and an orphan Indian child travel through the American west and the American civil war.

Some of the most purposeful, breathtakingly beautiful writing I've read; the nuanced emotional and historical resonance that comes through in this spare but effective writing is truly artful. A favorite read of 2017 by a wide margin.

Brilliantly written love story - I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

The writing was very disjointed and hard to get into.

I truly enjoyed reading this book, narrated in the voice of an uneducated but insightful and soulful soldier. So many contradictions .... a beautiful gentle love story between two men who have few choices in life and must kill hundreds of times........ the ruthless murder of indigenous tribes, yet the daring rescue of one adopted native daughter, a gay marriage against the backdrop of Civil War destruction, and mostly, deep reflections about life by a simple plain-speaking soldier ! A brutal detailed look at American history and yet a tender story ! Really quite a brilliant book !

Costa Prize winner. The novel tells of the massacres of indigenous peoples and of a nation founded in violence and destruction. The book has been lauded for its lyrical prose, but it did not capture me.

Wonderfully unconventional historical novel and respectfully told love story. I couldn't put it down, while at the same time dreading it was going to end.