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Strange Flowers
Winner of the An Post Irish Novel of the Year 2020 Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award 'You have to truly love people to write like this' RACHEL JOYCE 'One of the greatest novels of this century' SUNDAY INDEPENDENT 'Gorgeously wrought' GUARDIAN In 1973, twenty-year-old Moll Gladney takes a morning bus from her rural home and disappears. Bewildered and distraught, Paddy and Kit must confront an unbearable prospect: that they will never see their daughter again. Five years later, Moll returns. What - and who - she brings with her will change the course of her family's life forever. Beautiful and devastating, this exploration of loss, alienation and the redemptive power of love reaffirms Donal Ryan as one of the most talented and empathetic writers at work today. _________ 'Outstanding ... Tender and beautifully written' INDEPENDENT 'All the beauty and sorrow of life can be found in these pages' KATHLEEN MACMAHON 'Exquisite . . . Beautiful' ANNE GRIFFIN, author of WHEN ALL IS SAID 'Ryan gathers together the fragments of broken lives and makes us something new and beautiful from them' RÓNÁN HESSION, author of LEONARD AND HUNGRY PAUL
The Thing About December
From the twice Man Booker longlisted author of From a Low and Quiet Sea 'A force of nature ... a life-enhancing talent' SEBASTIAN BARRY While the Celtic Tiger rages, and greed becomes the norm, Johnsey Cunliffe desperately tries to hold on to the familiar, even as he loses those who all his life have protected him from a harsh world. Village bullies and scheming land-grabbers stand in his way, no matter where he turns. Set over the course of one year of Johnsey's life, The Thing About December breathes with his grief, bewilderment, humour and agonizing self-doubt. This is a heart-twisting tale of a lonely man struggling to make sense of a world moving faster than he is. Donal Ryan's award-wi...
From a Low and Quiet Sea
SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BOOK AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE "Beautiful and affecting" -- David Nicholls, author of One Day A moving novel of three men, each searching for something they have lost, from the award-winning and Man Booker nominated author Donal Ryan. For Farouk, family is all. He has protected his wife and daughter as best he can from the war and hatred that has torn Syria apart. If they stay, they will lose their freedom, will become lesser persons. If they flee, they will lose all they have known of home, for some intangible dream of refuge in some faraway land across the merciless sea. Lampy is distracted; he has too much going on in his small town life in Ireland. H...
The Spinning Heart
Winner of the Irish Book Award Finalist for the Booker Prize This “affecting” debut is “reminiscent of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying” as it paints a vivid portrait of a working-class community in contemporary rural Ireland (New York Times Book Review). “One of my favorite Irish books . . . Moving, atmospheric and beautiful.” —Tana French In the aftermath of Ireland’s financial collapse, dangerous tensions surface in an Irish town. As violence flares, the characters face a battle between public persona and inner desires. Through a chorus of unique voices, each struggling to tell their own kind of truth, a single authentic tale unfolds. The Spinning Heart speaks for conte...
All We Shall Know
A breathtaking and redemptive novel from the award-winning and Booker Prize nominated author Donal Ryan Melody Shee is alone and in trouble. At 33 years-old, she finds herself pregnant with the child of a 17 year-old Traveller boy, Martin Toppy, and not by her husband Pat. Melody was teaching Martin to read, but now he’s gone, and Pat leaves too, full of rage. She’s trying to stay in the moment, but the future is looming, while the past won’t let her go. It’s a good thing that she meets Mary Crothery when she does. Mary is a bold young Traveller woman, and she knows more about Melody than she lets on. She might just save Melody’s life. Following the nine months of her pregnancy, All We Shall Know unfolds with emotional immediacy in Melody’s fierce, funny, and unforgettable voice, as she contends with her choices, past and present.
Room Little Darker
From one of Ireland's most grindingly authentic and radically original talents, Room Little Darker explores the clandestine aspects of modern life through jagged, visceral tales of wanton sex, broken relationships and futuristic nightmares. An abusive father haunts his daughter and wife from the confines of a nursing home; a couple with an appetite for S&M discover their escapades have led them into something unimaginably bleak; a desperate addict scours the depths of degradation in a nightmare Dublin; an unborn foetus narrates her torturous experience of the Irish legal system; a paedophile acquires a robotic little boy as part of his sex therapy. At once hilarious and profoundly moving, Caldwell's stories probe sexuality and disturbing psychology, and the darkess and light that lives within us all.
A Slanting of the Sun
An old man looks into the fearful eyes of a burglar left to guard him while his brother is beaten; an Irish priest in a war-torn Syrian town teaches its young men the art of hurling; the driver of a car which crashed, killing a teenage girl, forges a connection with the girlâe(tm)s mother; a squad of broken friends assemble to take revenge on a rapist; a young man sets off on his morning run, reflecting on the ruins of his relationship, but all is not as it seems. Donal Ryanâe(tm)s short stories pick up where his acclaimed novels The Spinning Heart and The Thing About December left off, dealing with the human cost of loneliness, isolation and displacement. Sometimes this is present in the ordinary, the mundane; sometimes it is triggered by a fateful encounter or a tragic decision. At the heart of these stories, crucially, is how people are drawn to each other and cling on to love, often in desperate circumstances. In haunting and often startling prose, Donal Ryan has captured the brutal beauty of the human heart in all its hopes and failings.
Holding Her Breath
SHORTLISTED FOR THE JOHN MCGAHERN PRIZE 2022 This critically acclaimed debut will be a guaranteed hit with literary fiction lovers this Christmas. _____________ A young woman comes of age in the shadow of her family's tragic past When Beth Crowe starts university, she is shadowed by the ghost of her potential as a competitive swimmer. Free to create a fresh identity for herself, she finds herself among people who adore the poetry of her grandfather, Benjamin Crowe, who died tragically before she was born. She embarks on a secret relationship - and on a quest to discover the truth about Benjamin and his widow, her beloved grandmother Lydia. The quest brings her into an archive that no scholar...
The Last Days of Summer
'Opens Vanessa Ronan's literary career the way dynamite opens a safe ... beautiful and invigoratingly shocking' Joseph O'Connor, Irish Times Mid-July in Texas. Cicadas shed their dry summer skins, the scent of roses hangs heavy in the still air, and a woman sits alone on her porch at dusk, watching the empty, merciless prairie, its light falling to darkness. He's coming home. Upstairs, Lizzie knows, her daughters are safe in their beds. Joanne, still young enough to smile at strangers, one last summer of childhood left in her. Katie, already a beauty, the first flush of womanhood blooming on her skin. Both sleeping soundly. But out beyond the boundary of their land, the townspeople sleep fit...
The First Sunday in September
'The First Sunday in September really is quite an achievement. The stories are vibrant and authentic, brimming with intensity and desire. I enjoyed it immensely.' – Donal Ryan 'Inventive and compelling, this lifts off the page. A visceral sports novel, and yet so tender.' – Danny Denton 'Imagine Raymond Carver meets Donal Ryan and you have Tadhg Coakley's novel. His writing is taut and vivid, his voice compelling and compassionate.' – Mary Morrissy 'The First Sunday in September takes us into the hearts and minds of a medley of characters who sometimes win but often lose, and whose experiences of life ring true.' – Madeleine D'Arcy It's All-Ireland Hurling Final Day. A hungover Clare...
