Spinning out of control'
A poignant story set in a modern society quickly losing its way, the sixth novel from bestselling author Donal Ryan will be launched in Nenagh next week.
‘Heart, Be at Peace’ is the long-awaited sequel to ‘The Spinning Heart’, Donal's debut work that took the literary world by storm when it was published in 2012. Earning him the Guardian First Book Award and EU Prize for Literature, it was the catalyst for an acclaimed writing career that has spawned five more novels and a book of short stories.
But, never one to stray far from his roots, it was always the Newtown native's intention to return to ‘The Spinning Heart’ and pick up where he left off. It seems he had unfinished business to attend to, revealing with a refreshing honesty that he was not happy with the way his breakthrough novel ended.
“I wanted to explore new territory but the characters in ‘The Spinning Heart’ kept recurring,” Donal said.
“There are characters from ‘The Spinning Heart’ throughout all my novels and stories, so it seemed like the natural thing to do.
“But also, I don't think ‘The Spinning Heart’ was resolved properly. The ending, in the way it was done, I was trying for a kind of literary ambiguity but, to be honest, it confused people.”
Donal's first book probably remains his best-known, even though his last - ‘The Queen of Dirt Island’ (2022) - was actually his bestselling, having fetched particular appeal in the US. Many of his readers will be familiar with the characters in ‘Heart, Be at Peace’, though the world they inhabit is set 10 years on from the events of the first novel.
‘REAL PEOPLE’
The author spoke of how readers related to his characters in ‘The Spinning Heart’. “People would say to me: ‘And how's Bobby? How's he getting on?’ It was as though these were real people!
“That's lovely to hear because it seems the characters have come to life for people. But, having said that, I think I should have made it a bit more clear at the end of ‘The Spinning Heart’ that Bobby is OK!”
Donal was in many ways inspired to put pen to paper on this occasion by his mother Ann, who passed away last year.
She used to work at the checkouts in Nenagh's Tesco supermarket. She often told her son that customers would ask her about Bobby and other characters from the fictional world that he created, which seemed to resonate so much with so many.
“I'm just sorry that I didn't write this book earlier, because my mother always said to me: ‘Would you not write the sequel to ‘The Spinning Heart’?’ It's the first book I've written that she won't ever read.”
TRAGEDY OF OUR TIME
In this story - again told in a sequence of 21 voices - the aforementioned Bobby is now the middle-aged father of two grown-up children. He sees danger everywhere and worries about the world they are coming of age in, an increasingly lawless world of rising criminality and misguided social mores that work against those trying to deal with the problem.
“A key theme of the book is people acting with impunity when it comes to drugs,” Donal said. “Everyone seems to know who's doing it, yet nobody is doing anything about it.
“It's an awful shame and it's one of the great tragedies of our time. It's very unfair on the guards. Their hands are so tied; you can't even look sideways at anyone these days and they've the ombudsman breathing down their neck while judges are letting people walk away. It's unbelievable.
“It's hard to see a solution to the problem. You can blame it on people who have no compunction about destroying others' lives for profit. That is one of the driving forces of the book.”
Donal uses the story to articulate his view that a “hard line” needs to be taken against criminality. “Things seem to be spinning out of control,” he warns us.
Ultimately, however, justice prevails. “There is a kind of almost wish fulfillment on my part in this book, the way things work out,” Donal said of bringing closure to ‘Heart, Be at Peace’.
SET IN NENAGH
As with all of his previous work, Donal's new novel has a local setting and features places as well as characters that many will readily identify with.
“It is set in Nenagh,” he said. “Everything I write is set in a kind of fictionalised north Tipp. I make changes to an extent, but it is very recognisable. I've never named the village the people live in, but Nenagh has always been the town nearby.”
Among the premises mentioned in the novel is the The Nenagh Bookshop on Pearse St, the venue where Donal has once again chosen to host the national launch of his book. “It's lovely that we have a great independent book shop in Nenagh and we should support it,” he commented.
As to whether ‘Heart, Be at Peace’ will garner similar accolades to his previous writing, the author prefers to dwell instead on the feedback he receives from his ever-widening fanbase.
“It's great, it's a real honour,” Donal said of the critical adulation he has received over the years. “But the biggest satisfaction is the readers - people who go to the expense of buying your book and giving time to your book - because it's a big chunk of your life; it takes seven or eight hours to read a book! It's a real act of generosity.”
BOOK LAUNCH
‘Heart, Be at Peace’ will be launched at The Nenagh Bookshop on Thursday, August 8. Donal will be there between 7pm and 9pm to chat and sign copies of his new book.