Eagerly anticipated first collection of short stories from the author of The Spinning Heart and The Thing About December
Donal Ryan is from Nenagh in County Tipperary. His first three
novels, The Spinning Heart, The Thing About December and All We
Shall Know, and his short story collection A Slanting of the Sun,
have all been published to major acclaim. The Spinning Heart won
the Guardian First Book Award, the EU Prize for Literature
(Ireland), and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards; it was
shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award,
longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize,
and was voted 'Irish Book of the Decade'. His fourth novel, From a
Low and Quiet Sea, was longlisted for Man Booker Prize and
shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2018.
A former civil servant, Donal lectures in Creative Writing at the
University of Limerick. He lives with his wife Anne Marie and their
two children just outside Limerick City.
"Donal Ryan's ambition is to evoke the marginal or washed-up existences of people in a global but very non-metropolitan Ireland as the 21st century dawns... He channels their voices with consummate ventriloquism ... Ryan's ear for an authentically crackling colloquialism is as sharp as ever... Ryan's skill with language flicks out slang and abuse with a masterly touch ... his ear is sharply attuned and his sense of irony remains mordant." -- Roy Foster The Irish Times "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." -- Joe Duffy Irish Mail on Sunday "Outstanding stories ... There's a bracing - indeed, sometimes saving - humour ... and there's a tenderness, too, towards many of the collection's lost souls... Ryan is already such a master of the short form that even when you dread the outcome, you can't stop reading." -- John Boland Irish Independent "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. 'Sky' [is] a story about everything - life, loss and loneliness - but also just about one man's love for his nephew. [The title story's] gentle and redemptive ending leaves you gaping with wonder." 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... These are plain-speaking stories, and in spite of the pervasive woe, this plain speech lends itself to blunt, bleak, brilliant humour... Each unit of language has been scrupulously positioned, though the overall effect is of effortlessness... This collection shows Ryan adding his own elastic yet distinctive voice to O'Connor's impeccable tradition." -- Sara Baume The Guardian
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