Books by Donal Ryan and Complete Book Reviews
Donal Ryan. Steerforth, $15 trade paper (160p) ISBN 978-1-58642-224-0
The winner of the Guardian First Book Award features a chorus of voices telling the story of an Irish village undergoing a post-recession crisis and evokes Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, right down to a section narrated by a recently deceased character.
READ FULL REVIEW
Donal Ryan. Penguin, $16 (192p) ISBN 978-0-14-313104-5
Ryan (The Spinning Heart) crafts a beautiful morality play that recalls the pastoral dramas of William Trevor or Edna O’Brien. When we first meet Melody Shee, she is 33 years old and 12 weeks pregnant by a 17-year-old Irish Traveller named Martin...
READ FULL REVIEW
Donal Ryan. Penguin Books, $17 trade paper (240p) ISBN 978-0-14-313639-2
Ryan (From a Low and Quiet Sea) impresses with this gorgeous and meticulous multigenerational family saga. In the early 1970s, 20-year-old Moll Gladney disappears from her family’s cottage in Knockagowny, Ireland, leaving behind her postman father,...
READ FULL REVIEW
Donal Ryan. Viking, $27 (256p) ISBN 978-0-593-65293-0
Ryan (Strange Flowers) returns with an inspired story about four generations of women and girls living together in a small Irish village. Saoirse Aylward is just days old in 1982 when her father is killed in a car accident. Her mother, Eileen, a...
READ FULL REVIEW
Donal Ryan. Viking, $28 (194p) ISBN 978-0-593-83464-0
The alluring latest from Ryan (The Queen of Dirt Island) comprises intimate monologues from 21 characters grappling with social change in small-town Ireland. The central arc, such as it is, turns on the arrival of a gang of small-time drug dealers...
READ FULL REVIEW
ARTICLES