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The Spinning Heart

The Spinning Heart

by Donal Ryan (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2012

    $5.31
Synopsis

My father still lives back the road past the weir in the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day to see is he dead and every day he lets me down. He hasn't yet missed a day of letting me down. 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 contemporary Ireland like no other novel. Wry, vulnerable, all-too human, it captures the language and spirit of rural Ireland and with uncanny perception articulates the words and thoughts of a generation. Technically daring and evocative of Patrick McCabe and J.M. Synge, this novel of small-town life is witty, dark and sweetly poignant. Donal Ryan's brilliantly realized debut announces a stunning new voice in literary fiction.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 160
 Publisher: Doubleday Ireland
Published: 11 Oct 2012
ISBN 10: 1781620075
ISBN 13: 9781781620076
Book Overview: Stunning debut novel from a new Irish writer.

Media Reviews
I was hugely impressed by The Spinning Heart. There will be many novels which explore the effect of the crash on the people of Ireland but I can't imagine a more original, more perceptive or more passionate work than this. Outstanding. -- John Boyne Most beautifully written and plotted. What a writer! It is amazing to read about such grief and pain and yet end up elevated by the quality of the writing. A wonderful book. -- Jennifer Johnston An ambitious exploration of contemporary Ireland, The Spinning Heart uncovers a fragmented, troubled society struggling under the weight of betrayal and regret. -- Sorcha Hamilton The Irish Times ...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 ... There are echoes ... of Patrick McCabe's stray sod country, though Tipperary-born 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. ... a darkly persuasive debut. -- John Boland Irish Independent [An] extraordinarily accomplished first novel... here is a new Irish writer of the very first order. Donal Ryan is the real deal. ... a brilliantly realised, utterly resonant state-of-the-nation landscape ... Ryan's feat is considerable. Narrative and character information is distributed among so many different voices and yet we never feel at a loss. Even the characters on the margins of the story ... add compelling colour and texture. Best of all, Ryan's ear for speech is acute. ... Given a novel as brilliantly realised as The Spinning Heart, I see no reason to look anywhere but the present. For Donal Ryan, the future is now. -- Declan Hughes Sunday Independent
Author Bio
Donal Ryan was born in a village in north Tipperary, a stroll from the shores of Lough Derg. Donal wrote the first draft of The Spinning Heart in the long summer evenings of 2010, and has also completed a second novel. He lives with his wife Anne Marie and two children just outside Limerick City.