Written over the past 10 years, ["The Flying Swans"] lacks momentum, as works extended over a period of time often do. It sprawls rather than drives through a 538-page account of the childhood and youth of Ulick O'Rehill. The narrative is a series of jerky jumps from scene to scene. The numerous characters dragged in and out of the action tend to be flat when they are not blurred.

But as a nineteenth-century Irish pastoral, "The Flying Swans" is an evocative book. In the earlier chapters when Ulick is in the country, there is an almost physical sense of well-groomed horses prancing across fields in early morning; of fresh cream and sweet butter in the dairy; of corn crakes singing in the meadow grass at twilight. When Ulick moves to the town of Cairnthual, there are mellowed scenes in an old-fashioned candy shop, at the village fair, and along...