• Hardcover
• 160
• The Spinning Heart
• Donal Ryan
• English
• 08 January 2019
• 9781781620069

Donal Ryan õ 9 READ & DOWNLOAD

REVIEW The Spinning Heart READ & DOWNLOAD The Spinning Heart ´ E-book, or Kindle E-pub Donal Ryan õ 9 READ & DOWNLOAD Ral Ireland and with uncanny perception articulates the words and thoughts of a generation Technically daring and evocative of Patrick McCabe and JM Synge this novel of small town life is witty dark and sweetly poignan. The best word to describe the relationship between Bobby and his father is toxic Everyday Bobby travels back to the little cottage in which he grew up to check if his father is still alive and everyday Bobby is disappointed to find that he is There is a red metal heart in the centre of the gate to the cottage rusted paint flaking off a metaphor for his father s eually broken down heart We find later in the book that his father had an eerily similar relationship with his own fatherIreland is still reeling from financial collapse and recession when Pokey Burke Bobby s boss disappears owing Bobby and many others money and wages Bobby was the foreman of a building crew looked up to by the lads but secretly lacking confidence and seeing himself as a coward a failure searching for reasons as to why his wife sticks by his sideBobby is the dominant central character in for such a short novel a massive cast of twenty one These character s personal narratives are woven together to form the story that is The Spinning Heart With all these characters we can see the debilitating effects that a national crisis has on a small rural town How the recession seems to amplify and exacerbate smaller personal problems At times the town almost feels like a puzzle and each character an integral piece needed to piece together the overall story Each piece or character will often have links to other characters and the reader may learn about a character from another character s perspective This brings to the fore a major theme of this novel Misconception and how with lack of information or the prevalence of rumours how easy it is to judge somebody erroneously We bear witness to how these erroneous views can have drastic fatal conseuences at the end of the bookAs we approach the end of the book the narratives tend to get darker with a child abduction and a murder rocking the little town Again rumours and innuendo cloud the character s perspectives as the culprits are sought afterRyan returns to Bobby s narrative at the end of the book and does a wonderful job of filling in the blanks and again showing us that time after time things are not what they seem and how we confidently believe something to be how we perceive it may not be the correct perception at allWonderful debut 4 starsThis was another buddy read with the wonderful Nat K and please stop and check out her review when she posts it

REVIEW The Spinning Heart

REVIEW The Spinning Heart READ & DOWNLOAD The Spinning Heart ´ E-book, or Kindle E-pub Donal Ryan õ 9 READ & DOWNLOAD H 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 ru. I didn t think I would enjoy this novel or rather novella I m wary of those 160 page books they often seem so lazy in execution like something the writer just phoned in You know you start and immediately you get ekhm the sense of an endingAdditionally the cover of The Spinning Heart looked dangerously close to Alan Hollinghurst The Line of Beauty so I expected the book to be half assed and derivative as well as full of bleakness steeped in alcohol it being an Irish book As you can see I started reading this choice of my book club with my head full of misconceptions I was so adamant in my prejudice that it wasn t until somewhere halfway through when I finally admitted to myself that The Spinning Heart was in fact uite wonderful although there is a lot of bleakness steeped in alcohol as it would be unavoidable in a book which takes place in rural Ireland in the wake of the financial crash I honestly don t know what Irish writers did during their country sudden and short lived but amazing prosperity No one wants to hear about thatEvery tiny chapter of The Spinning Heart is narrated by a different character who takes the stage to tell their story All of them have their uniue voices and personalities so Ryan s narrative and characterization skills can t be faulted The plot is interwoven with the stories so seamlessly that the characters never seem like props to push the plot along They are definitely there to get something of their chests and are completely unaware of the little bits they drop in that let us know where the story is going The book opens with Bobby s chapter and we immediately paint him in our heads the way he sees himself a rather average morally flawed culchie It s only when we hear about him from other characters he grows in our eyes and eventually becomes a village hero I absolutely loved putting different glasses on with every chapter and looking at the same community from a different vantage point As usual I did feel most for the obvious nutters coincidentally Telegraph s reviewer identified three nutters I only remember two I missed a nutter The Spinning Heart might be often bleak but it is also funny tender and many other things and made me wonder how it was exactly possible for it to be so full and rich while being so short It reads like a much longer book And it s cracking I also think it could be beautifully adapted for stage

REVIEW The Spinning Heart READ & DOWNLOAD The Spinning Heart ´ E-book, or Kindle E-pub Donal Ryan õ 9 READ & DOWNLOAD 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 uniue voices eac. this book won book of the year at the irish book awards in 2012 if james joyce had published every single book he had ever written in 2012 this book still would have won hi i m karen i make bold declarative statements welcomethis book is a stunner like Broken Harbour it speaks to the devastating economic and social climate in ireland after the death of the celtic tiger in this particular unnamed small town when the local construction company goes out of business and its owner skips town without paying his workers their wages it is just one factor contributing to a series of events that will ultimately end in kidnapping and murderthis book captures small town life perfectly it is told in a chorus of voices where each chapter is narrated in dialect by a single character and through their individual voices we see a whole tapestry of resentments ambitions yearning grief admiration the shared embarrassed past and the shining small scale heroes it is so deftly handled in such a short book it is nothing short of astonishing it is funny it is sad it is dark it is a scattershot of singular lonely existences that make up this heartbreaking jewel of a novel but there is a story here it is not just a collection of experiences it just happens to be narrated by a number of different people and perspectives some unreliable for sure but the interlocking bits do make up a cohesive story it is gripping it is wonderful and i cannot wait to read from himcome to my blog