From Booklist
Ryan’s debut novel explores the devastating aftermath of Ireland’s recent economic collapse. In a small, predominately working-class town, a community comes apart at the seams following the failure of a crooked construction company (the town’s primary source of employment). People turn on one another as they struggle to find meaning in the new reality of material scarcity and joblessness. Bitterness and mistrust rule the day, as old scores are settled and long-simmering tensions rise to the surface. A different character narrates each chapter, and the same incidents and memories are viewed through different lenses. Woven through each chapter is the story of Bobby, a well-respected, hardworking father and husband whose current family drama is revealed in bits and pieces through the eyes of the various characters. Although the subject matter is overwhelmingly bleak, the prose is lyrical, and the voices are authentic. Flashes of humor and tenderness shine through as well, as the helplessness and frustration of an era is effectively captured through the lives of these small-town residents. --Kerri Price
Review
Winner - The Guardian First Book Award
Winner of two Irish Book Awards - Newcomer of The Year and Book of The Year
Longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
"Donal Ryan's piercing novella The Spinning Heart takes place in a village in central Ireland during the recession . . . A series of monologues from over 20 different townspeople testify to the "hysteria that's overtaking people" as the hardships mount . . . Mr. Ryan achieves something more notable than a mosaic of a town in moral and economic disarray: He gives us a convincing portrait of a good man in a bad time." -- The Wall Street Journal
"Irish author Ryan's debut takes readers to the 'heart' of hardscrabble life in Ireland in the era after the economic boom and bust of 2008. The novel received Book of the Year honors at the Irish Book Awards. . . . Reminiscent of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, this book gives readers a story—or rather stories—told from multiple perspectives, each chapter using a different voice. . . . Disturbing and unnerving but ultimately beautiful." -- Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
"[Ryan] credibly conveys the viewpoints of men and women of all ages in language distinct from one section to the next. . . . [T]his startling debut reads like a modern Irish twist on William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying."-- Library Journal (Starred Review)
"Equal parts mournful and hopeful, the book pays keen attention to the ways lives coalesce and fall apart in time of personal and national crises. . . . Ryan has created a faithful portrait of a time and place in his debut novel, but his truest accomplishment lies in the fact that, though the individual accounts add up to a greater whole, each story stands on its own." -- Publishers Weekly
"The prose is lyrical, and the voices are authentic. Flashes of humor and tenderness shine through as well, as the helplessness and frustration of an era is effectively captured through the lives of these small-town residents." -- Booklist
"While The Spinning Heart's form and premise harken to Under Milk Wood and the Spoon River Anthology, its content is uniquely evocative of Ireland, thanks to the cultural archetypes Ryan examines and the contemporary realities and nuances he deftly portrays." -- Irish America
"The traditional epithet for a good first novel is 'promising'. The Spinning Heart, however, is far more than that. Instead, it's the unambiguous announcement of a genuine and apparently fully-formed new talent." -- The Spectator
"A funny, moving, technically inventive first novel.... 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 Financial Times
"The recession has hit rural Ireland, and 'the sky is falling down." Through 21 different voices, Donal Ryan's virtuoso debut novel pieces together a fractured portrait of a community in shock. . . . What is so special about Ryan's novel is that it 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." -- The Guardian
"I have ordered a copy of The Spinning Heart for everyone I know who loves to read. What a treasure of a book." -- Natascha McElhone
"I can't imagine a more original, more perceptive or more passionate work than this. Outstanding." -- John Boyne
"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. 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." -- John Boland
"Ryan's feat is considerable. Narrative and character information is distributed among so many different voices and yet we never feel at a loss. Best of all, Ryan's ear for speech is acute...Given a novel as brilliantly realized as The Spinning Heart, I see no reason to look anywhere but the present. For Donal Ryan, the future is now." -- Declan Hughes
"A new Irish writer of the very first order. Donal Ryan is the real deal." -- The Sunday Independent
"For all the harshness of language and the often brutal experiences, The Spinning Heart is unexpectedly tender. . . . An exciting 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." -- The Irish Times
"Startling audacity... [The Spinning Heart] may be slim in size, but it is hugely ambitious in structure and devastating in its emotional impact. Too often contemporary fiction is criticized for not engaging enough with contemporary issues, but this breathtakingly empathetic account of a community crumbling under the pressures of the recession deserves to stand as a companion piece to Anne Enright's wonderful The Forgotten Waltz, also set against the boom and bust of recent Irish history." -- Lisa Allardice, Guardian First Book Award Chair and Guardian Review Editor
"The novel's multiple voices – including one terrific posthumous one – are a virtuosic achievement. . . . The novel's last line – "What matters only love?" – is peculiarly unpunctuated. Its meaning remains somewhat vague, but perhaps one might take it as a defense of the primacy of love: Could it be that despite all the divisions during this downturn, despite that possibly mocking symbol of the spinning heart on Bobby's father's gate, love is still all that really matters?" -- Rebecca Foster, BookBrowse.com
"Twenty-one honest and scalding human voices conspire to tell the tale of the myriad struggles engendered by financial desperation." -- World Literature Today
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