The Spinning Heart

Winner of the Irish Book Award
Finalist for the Booker Prize

This “affecting” debut is “reminiscent of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying” as it paints a vivid portrait of a working-class community in contemporary rural Ireland (New York Times Book Review).

“One of my favorite Irish books . . . Moving, atmospheric and beautiful.” —Tana French

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.
 
Irish Book of the Decade (Dublin Book Festival)
First Book Award (The Guardian)
“Newcomer of the Year” and “Book of the Year” (Irish Book Award)
“Best Book of the Year” (Library Journal)"One of my favorite Irish books ... It’s moving, atmospheric and beautiful."
-- Tana French in the New York Times

"At the book’s figurative heart is the construction foreman Bobby Mahon, a young husband and father whose moral decency anchors the story. Both his goodness and his brogue lend the novel an old-fashioned, storybook quality ('He drank out the farm to spite his father') that overlaps convincingly with mentions of Facebook, 'prefab' doors and dubious investments in Dubai to create an affecting portrayal of contemporary rural Ireland. With . . . its rotation of voices—sharing regrets and desires along with town gossip—reminiscent of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology . . . Ryan writes with compassion, honesty and an appealing deadpan humor."
—The New York Times Book Review

"Ryan’s compelling, insightful tale chronicles the lives of the residents of a tightknit, rural town in the aftermath of the Irish economic collapse. This short, swift, brutally funny romp through the fallout of a national disaster points to the likelihood of emotional crisis when one’s livelihood and purpose disappear without warning . . . Although a great strength of the book is Ryan’s ability to capture the vernacular of contemporary Ireland and its diverse citizens, from newly arrived immigrants to jaded old men “drinking the farm” in local pubs to young, enterprising university graduates with stacks of useless ambition—the story itself might take place in any country affected by the disastrous economic upheavals of recent years."
—The Boston Globe

"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

"Donal Ryan's heartbreaking (and often hilarious) narratives deliver life during the Irish economic collapse of recent years. His characters' testimonies glow with humor, pathos, wit and irony . . . Donal Ryan's outspoken, damaged characters exquisitely deliver the psychological traumas and social fissures generated by sudden economic breakdowns."
—Celtic ConnectionDonal Ryan, from Nenagh in County Tipperary, is a recipient of the 2015 European Union Prize for Literature. His first novel, The Spinning Heart, was published to major acclaim. It won the Guardian First Book Award and the Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards; it was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize. His second novel, The Thing About December, was a finalist for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. Donal lives with his wife Anne Marie and their two children just outside Limerick City.BOBBY

MY FATHER still lives back the road past the weir in the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day to see is he dead and every day he lets me down. He hasn’t yet missed a day of letting me down. He smiles at me; that terrible smile. He knows I’m coming to check is he dead. He knows I know he knows. He laughs his crooked laugh. I ask is he okay for everything and he only laughs. We look at each other for a while and when I can no longer stand the stench off of him, I go away. Good luck, I say, I’ll see you tomorrow. You will, he says back. I know I will.
There’s a red metal heart in the centre of the low front gate, skewered 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 spins in the wind, though. I can hear it creak, creak, creak as I walk away. A flaking, creaking, spinning heart.

When he dies, I’ll get the cottage and the two acres that’s left. He drank out Granddad’s farm years ago. After I have him buried, I’ll burn the cottage down and piss on the embers and I’ll sell the two acres for as much as I can get. Every day he lives lowers the price I’ll get. He knows that too; he stays alive to spite me. His heart is caked with muck and his lungs are shrivelled and black, but still he manages to draw in air and wheeze and cough and spit it back out. I was left go from my job two months ago and it was the best medicine he could have got. It gave him an extra six months, I’d say. If he ever finds out how Pokey Burke shafted me, he’ll surely make a full recovery. Pokey could apply to be beatified then, having had a miracle ascribed to him.
What reason would I have ever had not to trust Pokey Burke? He was young when I started working for him – three years younger than me – but the whole parish had worked for his auld fella and no one ever had a bad word to say much beyond the usual sniping. Pokey Burke was called after the Pope: Seán Pól, his parents christened him. But his brother Eamonn was not yet two years old when his parents brought the new baby home and he decided the new baby was Pokey and everybody agreed away with him and little Seán Pól was stuck with Pokey for a lifetime. And beyond, if he leaves anyone behind that will remember him or talk about him when he’s gone.

I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN something was up the day last year when Mickey Briars came in asking about his pension. Did ye boys know we’re all meant to be in a proper pension? We didn’t Mickey. Ya, with some crowd called SIFF. A proper pension like, not just the state one. Tis extra. Mickey’s left hand was outstretched. It held the invisible weight of what he should have been given but wasn’t. He tapped out his list of ungiven things, a bony finger slapping on sundried, limeburnt flesh. There were tears in his yellow eyes. He was after being shafted. Robbed. And not even by a man, but by a little prick. That’s what he couldn’t get over.

He went over and started to beat the prefab door until Pokey opened it a crack and threw an envelope at him and slammed the door again, just as Mickey put his head down and went to ram him like an old billy goat. Mickey’s hard old skull splintered that door and it very nearly gave way. Pokey must have shat himself inside. I want my fuckin pension you little prick, Mickey roared and roared. I want my fuckin pension and the rest of my stamps. Come out you bollocks till I kill you. For a finish he went on a rampage around the place, turning over barrows and pulling form- work apart and when he picked up a shovel and started swinging, we all ran for cover. Except poor innocent Timmy Hanrahan: he only stood grinning back to his two ears like the gom that he is.

Auld Mickey Briars lamped Timmy Hanrahan twice across both sides of his innocent young head before we subdued him. We locked Mickey into the back of Seanie Shaper’s Hiace until he became more philosophical for himself. Then we left him out and we all dragged crying, bleeding Timmy up the road to Ciss’s and fed him pints for the evening. Mickey Briars softened his Jameson with tears and told Timmy he was sorry, he was always fond of him, he was a grand boy so he was, it was only that he thought he was laughing at him. I wouldn’t laugh at you, Mickey, Timmy said. I know you wouldn’t son. I know you wouldn’t.

Pokey had shouted after us to put the first round of drink on his slate. There wasn’t a man of us put his hand in his pocket all evening. Poor Timmy puked his guts up early on in the session and we slagged him – good-naturedly of course – and he laughed through his snots and his tears and the blood on his head caked up grand and came off in one thin scab before we sent him walking home for himself with a bag of chips and three battered sausages and a dose of concussion that could have easily killed him.

To this day there’s a quare auld draw on one of his eyeballs, as if it’s not able to keep time with its comrade. But it makes no odds to Tim; if there’s a mirror in that house he hardly pays it any heed. And if he’s thicker than he was before, who’s to say? Who’s to care? You don’t need brains to shovel shit and carry blocks and take orders from rat-faced little men who’ll use you all day and laugh at you all night and never pay in your stamps.

That’s the worst of the whole thing. We all went in to draw our stamps and they only laughed at us. Stamps? What stamps? There wasn’t a stamp paid in for any of us, nor a screed to the Revenue, either. I showed the little blonde girl at the hatch my last payslip. You could clearly see what was taken out: PRSI, PAYE, Income levy, pension. She held it in front of her with her nose wrinkled up like I was after wiping my armpit with it. Well? I said. Well what? What’s the story? There’s no story sir. I wasn’t on the computer as an employee of Pokey Burke or anyone else. Did you never look for a P60 from your employer? A what, now? You’re some fool, she said with her eyes. I know I am, my red cheeks said back. I think she started to feel sorry for me then. But when she looked at the line of goms behind me – Seanie Shaper, innocent Timmy, fat Rory Slattery and the rest of the boys, all clutching their dirty payslips – she started to feel more sorry for herself.