Donal Ryan, from Nenagh in County Tipperary, is a recipient of the 2015 European Union Prize for Literature. His first novel, The Spinning Heart, was published to major acclaim. It won the Guardian First Book Award and the Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards; it was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize. His second novel, The Thing About December, was a finalist for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. Donal lives with his wife Anne Marie and their two children just outside Limerick City.
"One of my favorite Irish books ... It’s moving, atmospheric and
beautiful."
-- Tana French in the New York Times
"At the book’s figurative heart is the construction foreman Bobby
Mahon, a young husband and father whose moral decency anchors the
story. Both his goodness and his brogue lend the novel an
old-fashioned, storybook quality ('He drank out the farm to spite
his father') that overlaps convincingly with mentions of Facebook,
'prefab' doors and dubious investments in Dubai to create an
affecting portrayal of contemporary rural Ireland. With . . .
its rotation of voices—sharing regrets and desires along with town
gossip—reminiscent of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Edgar
Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology . . . Ryan writes with
compassion, honesty and an appealing deadpan humor."
—The New York Times Book Review
"Ryan’s compelling, insightful tale chronicles the lives of the
residents of a tightknit, rural town in the aftermath of the Irish
economic collapse. This short, swift, brutally funny romp through
the fallout of a national disaster points to the likelihood of
emotional crisis when one’s livelihood and purpose disappear
without warning . . . Although a great strength of the book is
Ryan’s ability to capture the vernacular of contemporary Ireland
and its diverse citizens, from newly arrived immigrants to jaded
old men “drinking the farm” in local pubs to young, enterprising
university graduates with stacks of useless ambition—the story
itself might take place in any country affected by the disastrous
economic upheavals of recent years."
—The Boston Globe
"A convincing portrait of a good man in a bad time."
—The Wall Street Journal
"Irish author Ryan's debut takes readers to the 'heart' of
hardscrabble life in Ireland in the era after the economic boom and
bust of 2008. The novel received Book of the Year honors at the
Irish Book Awards . . . Reminiscent of Faulkner’s As I Lay
Dying, this book gives readers a story—or rather stories—told
from multiple perspectives, each chapter using a different voice .
. . Disturbing and unnerving but ultimately beautiful."
—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
"[Ryan] credibly conveys the viewpoints of men and women of all
ages in language distinct from one section to the next . . . [T]his
startling debut reads like a modern Irish twist on William
Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying."
—Library Journal (Starred Review)
"Equal parts mournful and hopeful, the book pays keen attention to
the ways lives coalesce and fall apart in time of personal and
national crises . . . Ryan has created a faithful portrait of a
time and place in his debut novel, but his truest accomplishment
lies in the fact that, though the individual accounts add up to a
greater whole, each story stands on its own."
—Publishers Weekly
"The prose is lyrical, and the voices are authentic. Flashes of
humor and tenderness shine through as well, as the helplessness and
frustration of an era is effectively captured through the lives of
these small-town residents."
—Booklist
"While The Spinning Heart's form and premise harken to Under Milk
Wood and the Spoon River Anthology, its content is uniquely
evocative of Ireland, thanks to the cultural archetypes Ryan
examines and the contemporary realities and nuances he deftly
portrays."
—Irish America
"The traditional epithet for a good first novel is 'promising'. The
Spinning Heart, however, is far more than that. Instead, it's the
unambiguous announcement of a genuine and apparently fully-formed
new talent."
—The Spectator
"A funny, moving, technically inventive first novel . . .
Structurally the novel gestures to William Faulkner's As I Lay
Dying, while Ryan's sensitive observations on Irish life seem
responsive to the work of his compatriot Patrick McCabe. That Ryan
does not look out of place in such literary company is a measure of
his achievement."
—The Financial Times
"The recession has hit rural Ireland, and 'the sky is falling
down.' Through 21 different voices, Donal Ryan's virtuoso debut
novel pieces together a fractured portrait of a community in shock
. . . What is so special about Ryan's novel is that it seems to
draw speech out of the deepest silences; the testimony of his
characters rings rich and true—funny and poignant and banal and
extraordinary—and we can't help but listen."
—The Guardian
"I have ordered a copy of The Spinning Heart for everyone I know
who loves to read. What a treasure of a book."
—Natascha McElhone
"I can't imagine a more original, more perceptive or more
passionate work than this. Outstanding."
—John Boyne
"A first novel that's up-to-date in its concerns but that also
transcends the merely topical in its bleak, if often savagely
funny, vision of a rural Ireland. Donal Ryan has an imaginative
insight into his characters that's all his own and a furious energy
to his prose that gives arrestingly vivid life to these blighted
souls."
—John Boland
"Ryan's feat is considerable. Narrative and character information
is distributed among so many different voices and yet we never feel
at a loss. Best of all, Ryan's ear for speech is acute . . . Given
a novel as brilliantly realized as The Spinning Heart, I see no
reason to look anywhere but the present. For Donal Ryan, the future
is now."
—Declan Hughes
"A new Irish writer of the very first order. Donal Ryan is the real
deal."
—The Sunday Independent
"For all the harshness of language and the often brutal
experiences, The Spinning Heart is unexpectedly tender . . . An
exciting contemporary novel about the lost and the wounded that
listens to the present without discarding either the sins of the
fathers or the literary legacy of the past."
—The Irish Times
"Startling audacity . . . [The Spinning Heart] may be slim in size,
but it is hugely ambitious in structure and devastating in its
emotional impact. Too often contemporary fiction is criticized for
not engaging enough with contemporary issues, but this
breathtakingly empathetic account of a community crumbling under
the pressures of the recession deserves to stand as a companion
piece to Anne Enright's wonderful The Forgotten Waltz, also set
against the boom and bust of recent Irish history."
—Lisa Allardice, Guardian First Book Award Chair and Guardian
Review Editor
"The novel's multiple voices—including one terrific posthumous
one—are a virtuosic achievement. . . . The novel's last line—"What
matters only love?"—is peculiarly unpunctuated. Its meaning
remains somewhat vague, but perhaps one might take it as a defense
of the primacy of love: Could it be that despite all the divisions
during this downturn, despite that possibly mocking symbol of the
spinning heart on Bobby's father's gate, love is still all that
really matters?"
—Rebecca Foster, BookBrowse.com
"Twenty-one honest and scalding human voices conspire to tell the
tale of the myriad struggles engendered by financial
desperation."
—World Literature Today
"Donal Ryan's heartbreaking (and often hilarious) narratives
deliver life during the Irish economic collapse of recent years.
His characters' testimonies glow with humor, pathos, wit and irony
. . . Donal Ryan's outspoken, damaged characters exquisitely
deliver the psychological traumas and social fissures generated by
sudden economic breakdowns."
—Celtic Connection
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