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An Indie Next Selection
Short stories that capture the brutal beauty of the human heart in all its failings, hopes, and quiet triumphs—from one of “the most exciting voices in contemporary Irish fiction” (The Sunday Independent)
Donal Ryan's short stories pick up where his acclaimed novels The Spinning Heart and The Thing About December left off, dealing with dramas set in motion by loneliness and displacement and revealing stories of passion and desire where less astute observers might fail to detect the humanity that roils beneath the surface. Sometimes these dramas are found in ordinary, mundane situations; sometimes they are 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 to love when and where it can be found.
In a number of the these stories, emotional bonds are forged by traumatic events caused by one of the characters—between an old man and the frightened young burglar left to guard him while his brother is beaten; between another young man and the mother of a girl whose death he caused when he crashed his car; between a lonely middle-aged shopkeeper and her assistant. Disconnection and new discoveries pervade stories involving emigration (an Irish priest in war-torn Syria) or immigration (an African refugee in Ireland). Some of the stories are set in the same small town in rural Ireland as the novels, with names that will be familiar to Ryan's readers.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
September 29, 2015 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781586422363
- File size: 1997 KB
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781586422363
- File size: 1997 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from January 1, 2016
Good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to good people, and sometimes, good people do bad things. Ryan's characters observe and endure it all, drawing readers into their foolish decisions, heartbreak, and, too seldom, their joy as they go about the mundanities of life. This title reveals the author experimenting a little more than in his previous works, offering short stories that explore facets of life at a remove from the mainly peaceful, or at least introspective, settings of his award-winning novels The Spinning Heart and The Thing About December. In one story, a protagonist leads a killing mob; in another, the reader will sympathize with a thief. The work even leaves Ryan's rural Ireland, portraying in one tale a priest who finds friendship and then suspicion in Syria. Still, whether the character is a man falling for a woman who's shockingly wrong for him, a boy who's enduring a racist slur for the first time, or a so-called caregiver who abuses disabled people, the stories offer the best of what Ryan's fans have come to love: a piercing look at real life in all its beauty and brutality. VERDICT A treat for lovers of literary fiction.--Henrietta Verma, formerly with Library Journal
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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