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Interviews

“This is my most personal novel yet”: Donal Ryan on Strange Flowers

Donal Ryan on his brush with Traveller magic

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Features

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A Conversation with Donal Ryan

The Queen of Dirt Island

This is a generous mosaic of a novel about the staying power of love and pride and history and family. While Donal Ryan is never afraid of "all the meanness and sorrow of the world," he also manages to excavate the thrilling beauties that hold us together. He manages, with wit and grace, to illuminate the anonymous corners of human experience and get at the underworld of our souls.

Donal Ryan is one of the finest novelists writing today and this is a gem of a novel. Full of humanity, humility, humour, drama and mystery, his characters are so vivid you feel they are sitting outside, waiting for him to conjure them to life. He writes with grace and precision, with love indeed, about who we are and why, about family history and the ghosts we carry. A haunting, exquisite masterpiece.

From its opening pages, this book exerts a quiet, propulsive hold over its reader. The three generations of Aylward women will break your heart and then put it back together again. It's a beautiful, compassionate novel - Donal Ryan at his inimitable best.

Beautifully poised, sad, poetic and human....I loved every single line.

I truly enjoyed The Queen Of Dirt Island from its jolting first chapter to its calm, graceful conclusion. Now I'm on to Strange Flowers.

Ryan's writing is so musical, so easily heard, that your eyes will dance through its pages.

'[A] master storyteller. The most vivid characters, so full of life. You read each short chapter wondering how he's crammed in so much heart and wonder, while the story itself ramps up to its quietly devastating and marvellous conclusion.'

'Donal Ryan repeatedly broke my heart and then soldered it back together with words of molten gold. The Queen of Dirt Island is a powerful tribute to mothers in all of their ferocity, tenderness and guilt. I loved this book with my whole patchwork heart. Eloquent, beautiful and threaded throughout with a joyful savage humour, a privilege to read, and re-read.'

I was thunderstruck by this exquisitely beautiful and powerful novel. This is writing of shimmering truthfulness, empathy and authority by the most consistently brilliant Irish writer of his generation.

The Queen of Dirt Island is the work of a master writer in full flow. Donal Ryan is uncommonly perceptive at finding greatness in humanity's goodness. This is his best novel yet.

Donal Ryan makes writing look effortless. He manages to capture the world and all its broken beauty in one tiny corner of Ireland. His characters feel like people you've always known. His words seem to sing off the page.

Simply sumptuous...This soaring tale of four generations of women in a small Irish town is bursting with humour and pathos. The Queen of Dirt Island contains shocking twists, deaths, reflections on how fiction misappropriates lives and a sharp portrait of how love can lift and twist the human heart....glorious.

In gorgeous, graceful prose, Donal Ryan tells the story of four generations of women in this tender, joyful gem of a novel.

An endlessly surprising story of the heart's secret places, and what we hide there... This magnificent novel confirms Donal Ryan is a writer of rare and precious vision: he sees the world as it ought to be, and dares you to believe in it.

A stunning portrayal of intergenerational family love and the complications of the human condition. I was swept up in the world of the Aylward women: in their power and pain and mostly, in their fierce resilience. A novel full of compassion and honesty, where love triumphs. The prose is pitch perfect.

Hymn to the warp and woof of life; celebration of the flip-flop way of family; soaring testimony to the endurance of the human spirit. And all delivered with his trademark compassion, empathy, humour and brio. A gift of a book.

Big-hearted, generous and brimful of emotion, this is a gorgeous, life-enhancing novel.

Ryan's writing is like poetry and he has a real gift for creating characters who live in full technicolour. Highly recommend

In Ryan's hands the mundane and the everyday is transformed into a thing of beauty, thrumming with significance.

Tender with comic observation ... a topsy-turvy emotional rollercoaster

Exquisitely rendered. It reads like musical sounds, full of light and lilting melody...it's funny and sad, and sparks with the most tremendous, tart, wit.

The characters are compelling and vividly drawn, the dialogue is profane and frequently hilarious; the prose drips like honey off a spoon.

A jewel of a novel that will surely become a classic... enthralling and unmissable

DAILY EXPRESS, 'Fiction Highlights of 2022'

A celebration of love and loyalty among women.

Big-hearted, generous and brimful of emotion, this a gorgeous, life-enhancing read

It is a beaut. It's a celebration of women and of womanhood. I see my mother in this, I see my sister ... This book is a joy.

If language - lyric, lovely and funny, steeped in County Tipperary - and women (men come and go, rarely center a chapter and are often useless, sometimes cruel) are of no interest to you, The Queen of Dirt Island is not your next read. Ryan's book is a celebration, in an embroidered, unrestrained, joyful, aphoristic and sometimes profane style, of both ... The Queen of Dirt Island gives the women their due, and the reader is rewarded.

Donal Ryan's The Queen of Dirt Island is a little Irish miracle ... there's as much implicit wisdom in these pages about how to live as how to write ... Ryan has his own emotional range and a way of capturing the largeness of what look like tiny lives but aren't

Discover the emotional, bestselling novel about four generations of women and the stories that bind them, from the Booker longlisted author Of Strange Flowers. 
 
'One of the finest novelists writing today... a haunting, exquisite masterpiece.' RACHEL JOYCE 
 
'Endlessly surprising and incredibly moving' DAVID NICHOLLS 
 
'Beautiful, compassionate ... Donal Ryan at his inimitable best.' MAGGIE O'FARRELL 
 
___________ 
 
The Aylward women are mad about each other, but you wouldn't always think it. 
 
You'd have to know them - in spite of what neighbours might say about raised voices and dramatic scenes - to know that that their house is a place of peace, filled with love, a refuge from the sadness and cruelty of the world. 
 
The head of the family, Nana, is a woman who has buried two sons and whose life has been the family farm. 
 
Her daughter-in-law, Eileen, is estranged from her own parents, having 'shamed' them and given birth to Saoirse. 
 
And then there's Saoirse herself, eavesdropping on lives she cannot comprehend. 
 
It is only when they must battle for the inheritance of Dirt Island - a narrow strip of land adjacent to Eileen's childhood home - that they truly understand the roots that bind their lives together. 
 
_________ 
 
'The prose drips like honey off a spoon' SUNDAY TIMES 
 
'Beautifully poised, sad, poetic and human....I loved every single line.' IAN RANKIN 
 
'A generous mosaic of a novel about the staying power of love and pride and history and family' COLUM McCANN 
 
'His paragraphs are unnoticeably beautiful, his heart always on show' ANNE ENRIGHT 
 
'A life-enhancing talent' SEBASTIAN BARRY 
 
'I would struggle to think of any other Irish author working today who writes with as much compassion as Donal Ryan' LOUISE O'NEILL

Strange Flowers

The extraordinary story of a family devastated by a sudden disappearance and transformed by a miraculous return from the award-winning author loved by David Nicholls, Kamila Shamsie and Sebastian Barry.

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

Here is love as a weapon and a balm. Love as faith, fate and redemption ... a gorgeously wrought book - compassionate without dissolving into nostalgia

Endlessly surprising and incredibly moving

A triumph ... Ryan slowly and beautifully reveals the way that even broken people can open the door fully to the truth of themselves

His moving story of love and loss deserves to win a host of awards. It's an outstanding read

I think you have to truly love people to write like this

A triumph of quiet but devastating power, by some distance the best novel I've read so far this year

A big-hearted, beautiful work of art, full of truth and intensity

Classic Ryan; poignant and atmospheric storytelling ... quiet but intermittently explosive

I knew Donal Ryan's latest would be good and I was right - it's a risky act of imagination that works, and the sentences are as beautiful as ever

The lyricism of Ryan's prose, laced with compassion, is astonishing

With each new novel Donal Ryan's ink seems to sink deeper into the page. In Strange Flowers he gathers together the fragments of broken lives and makes us something new and beautiful from them

Rónán Hession, author of Leonard and Hungry Paul

A book so exquisite in its language it pushes me to want to write better ... you will love the quiet world of Paddy &amp; Kit Gladney and all it is their daughter Moll brings to their door. Beautiful

A beautiful, almost unbearably moving novel. Donal Ryan's compassion shines through every word he writes

This is a novel to savour, for its mastery of language, its power of storytelling and its sure hand as it covers the sweep of time. Irish fiction was in a great place already, but Donal Ryan has gone and raised the bar again. All the beauty and sorrow of life can be found in these pages

The lyricism of the prose can be pitch perfect, placing Ryan among the great writers of rural Ireland such as John McGahern and Mary Lavin

It is the sweetest, gentlest story of love ... each character so tenderly evoked

Ryan's beautifully written story reads like coming home and is a breath of fresh air

Tender and beautifully written ... We read this outstanding book in one sitting and will definitely return to it again

Beautifully observed Tipperary setting and tenderly created characters telling a story of loss and redemption ... Love permeates Ryan's work

A master with the written world and who has an insight into the Irish psyche which is not only stunning, but is hard to touch with a flame

The slim novel belies its size by packing in a whole world of exploration of social class, gender, sexuality, race, parenthood, and religion. For all its scope, nothing is shoehorned in. It's all naturally and gently explored

One of the greatest Irish novels of this century so far

A brilliant and ambitious addition to a body of work from an author who is inevitably, and seemingly effortlessly, writing his way into the pantheon of great Irish novelists

Ryan reaffirms his place amongst Ireland's greatest wordsmiths ... This is a book which more than justifies the hype that accompanies it

A novel carried by deep feeling and great empathy

The writing is so exquisite, the dialogue so authentic, the sympathy so deep

Ryan's love of people pours from every page

One of the standout books for me this year. He's a master of the craft and has written a family story with humanity and warmth, turning sentence after sentence to die for

A lovingly crafted story that draws you in, gets under the skin and will resonate long after

The Thing About December

Brilliantly realized and deeply moving second novel from the author of the award-winning The Spinning Heart.

A force of nature ... a life-enhancing talent

His paragraphs are unnoticeably beautiful, his heart always on show, and he writes with a social accuracy that is devastating

Compelling and heartbreaking . . beautiful, yet simple and utterly convincing

Cements Ryan as the sharpest chronicler of modern Irish life

Painfully moving ... Ryan’s work has set a benchmark to which other writers will aspire.

A powerful and touching meditation on loneliness and isolation . . . Ryan continues to establish himself as an important voice in recording contemporary Ireland.

Powerful . . . Ryan is clearly committed to his subject and possesses the insight and empathy to illuminate the heart of the matter.

Ryan is a remarkably good chronicler of contemporary Irish life

Ryan holds you to the page by the sheer force of his language ... If you’re interested in the state of Irish fiction now, pick up a copy of this book.

Displaying again his exceptional gift for pinning a voice to the page, Ryan transforms Johnsey’s self-torturing internal soundtrack into something that’ll have you alternately cringing, cheering and laughing.

Ryan’s urgent, poetic prose captures the internal distress of his main character with forensic intensity. . . . a testament to this brightest of new writing talents. . . . Ryan has risen to the challenge of his second novel admirably. Recommended.

Powerful writing that certainly cements Ryan’s status as the newly crowned king of what the Irish Times has dubbed “recession lit”.

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-winning debut, The Spinning Heart, garnered unprecedented acclaim, and The Thing About December confirms his status as one of the best writers of his generation. 
 
_________ 
 
'His paragraphs are unnoticeably beautiful, his heart always on show, and he writes with a social accuracy that is devastating' ANNE ENRIGHT 
 
'Compelling and heartbreaking . . beautiful, yet simple and utterly convincing' SUNDAY TIMES 
 
'Painfully moving ... Ryan's work has set a benchmark to which other writers will aspire' JOHN BOYNE, IRISH TIMES 
 
'Cements Ryan as the sharpest chronicler of modern Irish life' ESQUIRE

The Spinning Heart

This stunning debut has won major acclaim, winning the Guardian First Book Award and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards ; it was shortlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Literary Award and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Filled with light and shade, love and tragedy ... if it was a song you could sing it

It’s furious, it’s moving, it’s darkly funny, it punches you right in the gut, the writing is effortlessly wonderful, and every one of the wide variety of voices rings utterly true.

Donal Ryan is the real deal … A brilliantly realised, utterly resonant state-of-the-nation landscape

Donal Ryan’s precise and evocative debut … is a textured account of a community as it was during a brief moment of time. … unexpectedly tender … Ryan’s prism of life and lives is compellingly humane. … This is an exciting, relevant and believable 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.

There’s a powerful sense of place and shared history binding Ryan’s many voices, their inner and outer selves, distilling a linguistic richness comparable to Under Milk Wood. . . . Ryan’s novel . . . 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.

Powerful and affecting . . . [a] superb, unforgettable and topical debut.

Humane, funny, moving and relevant, this is extremely impressive stuff.

A formidable debut, with snatches of the savage comedy of Patrick McCabe and a wistful cadence all its own.

[A] beguiling debut. … This may be the work of a debut novelist, but it is one who reads plenty and knows his business. … His salty, damaged characters give voice to the anger and heartache of a town snared by Ireland’s collapse. For this, we are in his debt.

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.

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.

…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.

Funny, moving, technically inventive … serves as a microcosm for Ireland in the aftermath of the financial crisis. … 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 portrait of a whole town facing sudden crisis naturally packs quite a punch. Even so, the most impressive aspect of this overwhelmingly impressive novel is the sheer quality of those 21 narrations. … The unambiguous announcement of a genuine and apparently fully-formed new talent.

Beautifully written… extraordinary reading… captured the essence of the sad part of what’s happening in Ireland. This book just got me by the throat. A stunning, stunning read… It comes with the highest imaginable endorsement from me... A modern literary masterpiece.

The most significant book to come out of Ireland since Angela’s Ashes … has the smack of authenticity. I’ve read many good books this year – new and old – but this is my book of 2012.

It is hard to believe that such beautiful but controlled writing could come from a debut author, but The Spinning Heart is just that. Each chapter is narrated by a unique voice from one member of an Irish community, building by the end of this slim novel a precise and fully formed portrait of the devastation of the financial crash on both a personal, private and public level. It is full of warmth and wit, but is also a haunting and a complex story. There’s murder, adultery, scamming and gossiping, alongside love and heartbreak, in this perceptive gem of a novel.

Winner of the Guardian First Book Award 2013 
 
Shortlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Literary Award 2014 
 
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013 
 
Winner of Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards 2012 
 
'Funny, moving and beautifully written' EDNA O'BRIEN 
 
 
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. 
 
_________ 
 
'Filled with light and shade, love and tragedy ... if it was a song you could sing it' ANNE ENRIGHT 
 
'Donal Ryan is the real deal ... a brilliantly realised, utterly resonant state-of-the-nation landscape' SUNDAY INDEPENDENT 
 
'I can't imagine a more original, more perceptive or more passionate work than this. Outstanding' JOHN BOYNE 
 
'It's furious, it's moving, it's darkly funny, it punches you right in the gut' NEW YORK TIMES

A Slanting of the Sun: Stories

Eagerly anticipated first collection of short stories from the author of The Spinning Heart and The Thing About December

From the twice Man Booker longlisted author of From a Low and Quiet Sea 
 
'Donal Ryan, one of our most remarkable writers, has produced a book of short stories of such visceral power that they hit you in the solar plexus. He deals with the dark side of modern Irish life and produces sentences of titanic impact.' IRISH MAIL ON SUNDAY 
 
 
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 girl'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 Ryan'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. 
 
_________ 
 
'Donal Ryan is a heartbreaker, his quicksilver prose laced with ... wistful rhythms ... These breathtaking stories explore human love against an uneasy landscape of violence and desperation... Donal finds hope in dark corners.' DAILY MAIL 
 
'Donal Ryan is a master of the magnetic first line ... His faithful subject is rural despair; the poetry of adversity, the baffling fortitude of intrinsically decent people ... This collection shows Ryan adding his own elastic yet distinctive voice to O'Connor's impeccable tradition.' GUARDIAN

All We Shall Know

The searing novel from the author of The Spinning Heart, The Thing About December and From a Low and Quiet Sea

From the twice Man Booker longlisted author of From a Low and Quiet Sea 
 
'Poetic, powerful and heart-rending' THE TIMES 
 
'An exquisite account of womanhood, friendship, prejudice and tradition that is both intimate in scale and awesome in achievement' IRISH INDEPENDENT 
 
 
Melody Shee is alone and in trouble. Her husband doesn't take her news too well. She can't tell her father yet because he's a good man and this could break him. She's trying to stay in the moment, but the future is looming - larger by the day - while the past won't let her go. What she did to Breedie Flynn all those years ago still haunts her. 
 
It's a good thing that she meets Mary Crothery when she does. Mary is a young Traveller woman, and she knows more about Melody than she lets on. She might just save Melody's life. 
 
_________ 
 
'A joy to read, for all that it breaks your heart' INDEPENDENT 
 
'One of the finest writers working in Ireland today ... worthy of Greek Drama' GUARDIAN 
 
'A stunning piece of work, utterly truthful and emotionally powerful' JOSEPH O'CONNOR 
 
'Work of genius ... I was entranced by it. Buckled by it' SEBASTIAN BARRY

A joy to read, for all that it breaks your heart

One of the finest writers working in Ireland today ... worthy of Greek drama

An exquisite account of womanhood, friendship, prejudice and tradition that is both intimate in scale and awesome in achievement

Work of genius ... I was entranced by it. Buckled by it.

A stunning piece of work, utterly truthful and emotionally powerful

So beautifully written and so full of compassion and humanity that I wanted to set fire to my laptop and never write again.

Donal Ryan's new book is an enthrallingly impassioned and compassionate read, ferocious but humane. All We Shall Know acknowledges the acts of vicious self-destruction the human heart is capable of, but does not accept the irreparability of such acts. To his raw, wounded and grieving characters Donal Ryan says: If you are still breathing, you can be redeemed.

I read it with enormous pleasure. He is a remarkably imaginative and beautiful user of the language. This book is very moving and true. I love the truth in his work.

All We Shall Know is really very good. All that we've come to expect from Donal: great humanity and an uncanny sense of place but this time – and at last! – we have a man writing from a woman's point of view in a totally convincing and non-patronising way.

My book of the year . . . a remarkable piece of literature. . . . Gets under the skin and into the brain of the reader. It's so absorbing . . . a beauty.

Donal Ryan's finest and surest novel yet is a touching, unsentimental tale. . . . Ryan's empathy for his women adds depth, power and humanity to a layered story of love, betrayal and redemption.

All We Shall Know is a new and ambitious departure . . . exerts a powerful grip. . . . the novel, written at white heat in sentences that sometimes flow for a full paragraph, reads compulsively and is delivered with an impressively disciplined power. Ryan’s rise to prominence may have been meteoric and his output dizzyingly prolific, but he is a writer who is very far from being a flash in the pan.

Ryan is alert to the sharp, hurtful qualities of language. . . . His ear for dialogue is superb. . . . An awesome creation, [Melody] is at times heroically unlikeable.

A consummate artist . . . The denouement offers a satisfying element of redemption . . . a great writer whose steady maturation proceeds apace.

Raw, radiant prose . . . [a] wonderful novel.

[A] gem of a novel. With a sure sense of place, and a convincing portrayal of life lived at the edgy margins, it vividly plots the landscape of the heart en route to a gripping and ultimately redemptive finale.

Ryan's third novel is an elegant, unflinching, entirely brilliant look at the waywardness of desire. . . . searing honesty that is raw but utterly riveting.

A powerful story that will pull you into a whirlwind of emotion and pain, but also the faintest glimmer of hope.

A stunning story that deserves great success.

All We Shall Know blew me away, left me blubbering on my commute and wide awake at 2 a.m. . . . He excels at first-person narrative, and it's this that makes All We Shall Know unforgettable.

An intense, dramatic story . . . rather touching.

His best yet . . . I kept re-reading paragraphs and whole pages to savour Ryan's remarkable prose. The book imbues profanity with poetry, and the characters, for all their flaws, are beautifully and sympathetically drawn.

Donal Ryan

Donal Ryan’s writing has earned him a place among the greatest names in Irish literature and this lyrical novel speaks to the very heart of modern Irish society

An astute mosaic. Add to that Ryan’s gift for capturing the foolishness and fakery of human nature and the lyrical power of Irish small-town gossip . . . and you have a portrait of modern Ireland through a series of hard minds and sometimes kind hearts

Ryan dives deep into his characters’ hopes and grievances, drawing out their voices with such precision that you can almost hear their breath between words . . . With any luck we will be back in this small place of vast intrigue to pick up with its people again a decade from now.

[The novel is] a kind of simulacrum of life, as if we have been landed in this village, have a chance to overhear its inhabitants’ most private thoughts, move from one house to another, sit in the pub, discover who believes who is to blame for what, and what can be excused or forgiven

This beautiful and moving novel, told in 21 voices, serves up heartbreak and hope in equal measure.

It's all there. Donal&rsquo;s trademark big heart and understanding of what it is to be human, all of it on the page and somehow beyond it. I loved it from the first page to the last &hellip; there are more moments of genius in this book than I care to mention. Beautiful ... a book full of love and hope, more needed in these days than ever.

Any new book by Donal Ryan is something to celebrate and Heart, Be at Peace is no exception. He is a powerful story teller immersed in all the intricacies of human relationships, and once again he brings us a novel with a heart as big as the community he describes. Clear-eyed, deeply ambitious, sharp, lyrical as always, by turns funny and terrifying, Donal Ryan shines his light in the darkest corners, and finds something for us to love. I am blown away by the ambition and scope of this exquisite piece of writing: Heart, Be at Peace is sublime in both its sentiment and beauty.

Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

This is Donal Ryan at his most assured, moving deftly between voices, fully inhabiting every character, breaking his poor readers' hearts. Every chapter's a tiny epic. Every sentence seems to sing. Ryan's writing is both of the moment and utterly timeless in its ability to capture the essence of what it means to be alive, to love, to grieve and cling to hope.

Ryan gives each a distinct voice and a rhythm to their thoughts

My book of the year is Donal Ryan's Heart, Be at Peace … Is it possible to say a work of fiction is true? Well, this is and once again, it's a book that stays with you well beyond the last page

Donal Ryan's Heart, Be at Peace is enthralling. He captures such a range of emotion, defiance, eloquence, crudity and dark humour, in brilliant prose that makes him stand out

Every novel by Donal Ryan extends his deserved reputation. I adored his Heart, Be at Peace.

The vibrancy, the dirt-under-the-nails intimacies he unearths, the recognition of primal forces in building or sundering family and/or community relationships, the susceptibilities of the unhappy and unfulfilled are brought together in a way that inspires and intimidates in equal measure . . For me, [Donal Ryan] is the greatest current Irish writer

This wonderful, upliftingly good, this tremendously well-constructed novel secures [Donal Ryan's] place at the very top table of Irish novelists. Probably among all novelists working in English, too. Yes, it is that good.

Ryan’s sentences gleam, peeling the calloused skin of machismo to expose the vulnerabilities of his men, cutting against our expectations . . . Heart, Be at Peace moves with the lightness and felicity of a story collection, sifting relationships built on sand, pummeled by tides of human folly

[A] powerful novel . . . The collective effect of [the characters'] intimate, first-person narratives is that of a confessional, revealing the psyche of a country going through a traumatic change.

Ryan is always deeply engaged by the way the fortunes of 21st-century Ireland impact directly on his characters: the financial emergency that afflicted this small town may have faded, but new troubles – opportunities, to some – have arisen to take their place. Ryan deftly interweaves a larger sense of danger, and an understanding of Ireland’s history, with domestic concerns.

WINNER OF THE IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR 
WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR FICTION 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE NERO NOVEL OF THE YEAR 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR 
 
'Donal Ryan’s writing has earned him a place among the greatest names in Irish literature and this lyrical novel speaks to the very heart of modern Irish society.' Maria Dickenson, Chair of the IBA judges 
 
'Beautiful...a book full of love and hope, more needed in these days than ever' Kit de Waal 
 
'I am blown away by the ambition and scope of this exquisite piece of writing...sublime in both its sentiment and beauty' Rachel Joyce 
 
Some things can send a heart spinning; others will crack it in two... 
 
In a small town in rural Ireland, the local people have weathered the storms of economic collapse and are looking towards the future. The jobs are back, the dramas of the past seemingly lulled, and although the town bears the marks of its history, new stories are unfolding. 
 
But a fresh menace is creeping around the lakeshore and the lanes of the town, and the peace of the community is about to be shattered in an unimaginable way. Young people are being drawn towards the promise of fast money whilst the generation above them tries to push back the tide of an enemy no one can touch… 
 
Told in twenty-one voices, Heart, be at Peace is a heartfelt, lyrical novel that can be read independently, or as a companion to Donal Ryan’s multi-award-winning novel, The Spinning Heart, voted ‘The Irish Book of the Decade’. 
 
***** 
 
PRAISE FOR DONAL RYAN: 
 
'One of the finest novelists writing today.' RACHEL JOYCE 
 
'His paragraphs are unnoticeably beautiful, his heart always on show' ANNE ENRIGHT 
 
'Endlessly surprising and incredibly moving' DAVID NICHOLLS 
 
'A life-enhancing talent' SEBASTIAN BARRY 
 
'I would struggle to think of any other Irish author working today who writes with as much compassion as Donal Ryan' LOUISE O'NEILL 
 
'Beautiful, compassionate...Donal Ryan at his inimitable best.' MAGGIE O'FARRELL 
 
'Beautifully poised, sad, poetic and human....I loved every single line.' IAN RANKIN 
 
'The prose drips like honey off a spoon' SUNDAY TIMES 
 
 
Nero Book Awards Shortlisted, 2024 
An Post Book Awards, November and December 2024 
Irish Times bestseller, August 2024

Donal Ryan

Praise for Heart, Be at Peace

Donal Ryan’s writing has earned him a place among the greatest names in Irish literature and this lyrical novel speaks to the very heart of modern Irish society

An astute mosaic. Add to that Ryan’s gift for capturing the foolishness and fakery of human nature and the lyrical power of Irish small-town gossip . . . and you have a portrait of modern Ireland through a ...

Ryan dives deep into his characters’ hopes and grievances, drawing out their voices with such precision that you can almost hear their breath between words . . . With any luck we will be back in this small place ...

Donal Ryan’s writing has earned him a place among the greatest names in Irish literature and this lyrical novel speaks to the very heart of modern Irish society

An astute mosaic. Add to that Ryan’s gift for capturing the foolishness and fakery of human nature and the lyrical power of Irish small-town gossip . . . and you have a portrait of modern Ireland through a ...

Ryan dives deep into his characters’ hopes and grievances, drawing out their voices with such precision that you can almost hear their breath between words . . . With any luck we will be back in this small place ...

Donal Ryan’s writing has earned him a place among the greatest names in Irish literature and this lyrical novel speaks to the very heart of modern Irish society

An astute mosaic. Add to that Ryan’s gift for capturing the foolishness and fakery of human nature and the lyrical power of Irish small-town gossip . . . and you have a portrait of modern Ireland through a ...

Ryan dives deep into his characters’ hopes and grievances, drawing out their voices with such precision that you can almost hear their breath between words . . . With any luck we will be back in this small place ...

Books by Donal Ryan

Articles featuring Donal Ryan

“This is my most personal novel yet”: Donal Ryan on Strange Flowers

Donal Ryan on his brush with Traveller magic

A Conversation with Donal Ryan

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