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The spinning heart by Donal Ryan
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The spinning heart (original 2012; edition 2013)

by Donal Ryan

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5163246,886 (3.8)1 / 107
Fiction. Literature. HTML:An "affecting" portrait of a working-class community in contemporary rural Ireland that is "reminiscent of William Faulker's As I Lay Dying" (The New York Times Book Review)

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. Donal Ryan's brilliantly realized debut announces a stunning new voice in fiction.
… (more)
Member:richardderus
Title:The spinning heart
Authors:Donal Ryan
Info:London : Doubleday Ireland, 2013.
Collections:Your library
Rating:***1/2
Tags:#PBS

Work Information

The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan (2012)

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» See also 107 mentions

English (31)  Dutch (1)  All languages (32)
Showing 1-5 of 31 (next | show all)
What happens when a story is pared down to its absolute essentials? There is nothing here in Donal Ryan's tale of rural Ireland that does not ring of truth. Each of the interior monologues shaves the skin off the apple. Even the monologue of the dead. I cannot think of another writer since William Faulkner who tells me what real people are thinking even as the characters are woven in their own words, then the words of their neighbours and relatives. There is no real present tense here. There is the impetus of the past folding these people into the future, like scraggly lines of DNA, or neurons of some colossal brain. ( )
  MylesKesten | Jan 23, 2024 |
I enjoyed this book but did find the different characters voices made for a disjointed telling of the story. It does come together in the end. ( )
  HelenBaker | Nov 27, 2023 |
John Lennon once sang :
If you had the luck of the Irish
You'd be sorry and wish you were dead
You should have the luck of the Irish
And you'd wish you was English instead!

I don't think the characters making up this novel would go that far, but they are all certainly down on their luck. During the "Celtic Tiger' period of the mid 90ies to early 2000 the Irish economy was booming and life seemed great for everyone. But in 2008 the bubble burst and a deep recession caused suffering for all. It's at this point where the book begins with Bobby's chapter. Most of the novel centers around Bobby,but there are 20 more chapters that each tell the plight of the village from a different point of view. That's what I found so brilliant about this book. Each character gets about a, 6 pages or so, chapter all their own. And yet so much is revealed about them in these short chapters. What is particularly fascinating is the is a vast diversity of the characters. Some we hate right from the start, some have our full support, but they're all just so miserable and so down on themselves. One of the darkest, bleakest, and depressing works of fiction I've read in a long time. But still a worthwhile read because the characters have an honesty and sense of perseverance about them. The Irish have suffered many hard times throughout the centuries, but they always keep up the good fight. ( )
  kevinkevbo | Jul 14, 2023 |
Winesburg, Ohio or Spoon River Anthology writ Irish and set in hard times after the big bubble economy burst. Lots of characters to follow and so I ended up thinking of them as "types"...desperate, or outraged, or defeated...depending on which of these timbres they sang in.

Ultimately, not to my taste. I like opera, less so oratorio. The interconnedtions of characters are often more interesting to me than the characters themselves, most especially when they're moaning and groaning about broadly similar things. ( )
  richardderus | Jun 20, 2023 |
Mal was neueres an irischer Literatur zur Einstimmung auf den St. Patrick's Day.

Neuer aber doch altbekannt ist die Stimmung, sind all die Probleme der Iren in dieser Geschichte, die so plötzlich und unerwartet ein paar Schattierungen düsterer wird. ( )
  cwebb | Mar 17, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 31 (next | show all)
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. Apart, understandably, from a now-marooned Siberian immigrant, everybody speaks with varying degrees of Irish demotic (‘in school I was well able for the English and geography and history’). Nonetheless, all are perfectly distinguishable, and in every case — including the Siberian immigrant — Ryan triumphantly pulls off a trick more usually associated with the best theatre: that of entirely convincing heightened speech. These monologues, you feel, may not be exactly what the characters would say — but they are exactly what the characters would want to say. As a result, we’re led deep into what I’m tempted to call their souls....Of course, 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.
 
Stories of murder, betrayal and kidnap thread through The Spinning Heart, Donal Ryan's debut, which is told from the points of view of 21 people struggling to get by in a rural village in contemporary south-west Ireland.
Compared to J M Synge and Patrick McCabe, praised by The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas author John Boyne and chosen to be the first novelist published by Doubleday Ireland, Ryan has a writing style that is perceptive, intimate and darkly comic, revealing the human cost of the financial crisis by creating a chorus of overlapping voices.
 
Ryan’s nuanced playfulness with language and the joyous idiom of west of Ireland speech doesn’t dilute the individuality of each character – and in a book of just over 150 pages, there are 21. Their surface wit and spark wrap around the despair at the book’s centre, with its fractured symbol of a flaking, spinning heart, worked in metal on the gate of Bobby’s much-hated father. As the story develops, Ryan stokes up momentum through each voice, leaving off at the point where circumstances spiral violently out of control....Caveats aside, this is a formidable debut, with snatches of the savage comedy of Patrick McCabe and a wistful cadence all its own.
 

» Add other authors

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Donal Ryanprimary authorall editionscalculated
Browning, JonPhotographersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Harte, BenjaminPhotographersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Shailer, R.Designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the memory of Dan Murphy
First words
My father still lives back the road past the weir in the cottage I was reared in.
Quotations
There's a red metal heart in the centre of the low front gate, skewererd on a rotating hinge. It's flaking now; the red is nearly gone. It needs to be scraped and sanded and painted and oiled. It still spings in the wind, though. I can hear it creak, creak, creak as I walk away A flaking, creaking, spinning heart. (p. 9)
And here am I, like an orphaned child, bereft, filling up with fear like a boat filling with water. (p. 20)
I love all my children the same way a swallow loves the blue sky; I have no choice in the matter. (p. 33)
The list of things he'd have done got longer and bigger over the years until we couldn't see each other at either side of it, and he left and never came back and the only difference was the noise of him was gone. (p. 70)
There was a red metal heart, spinning in the breeze in the centre of the low front gate. The hinge was loose but rusty, it squeaked and creaked but still allowed the litte heart to spin. It reminded me of my palpitations. (p. 124)
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What matters only love?
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Fiction. Literature. HTML:An "affecting" portrait of a working-class community in contemporary rural Ireland that is "reminiscent of William Faulker's As I Lay Dying" (The New York Times Book Review)

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. Donal Ryan's brilliantly realized debut announces a stunning new voice in fiction.

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Book description
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.

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.
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