#Blogtour Heart, Be at Peace by Donal Ryan

It's a pleasure to take part in the Blogtour Heart, Be at Peace by Donal Ryan.'

'A stunning lyrical novel from the Number one bestselling author Donal Ryan about love, loss, hope and connection.'

About the Author

Donal Ryan is an award-winning author from Nenagh, County Tipperary, whose work has been published in over twenty languages to major critical acclaim. The Spinning Heart won the Guardian First Book Award, the EU Prize for Literature (Ireland), and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards; it was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize, and was voted 'Irish Book of the Decade'. 

His fourth novel, From a Low and Quiet Sea, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2018, and won the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. His novel, Strange Flowers, was voted Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, and was a number one bestseller, as was his most recent novel The Queen of Dirt Island, which was also shortlisted for Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. Donal lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. He lives with his wife Anne Marie and their two children just outside Limerick City.

About the book

2019. Small town rural Island. 21 voices. - A standalone novel that can also be read as a companion to Donal Ryan's multi-award-winning bestseller, The Spinning Heart, voted ‘The Irish Book of the Decade’.

‘I said it before. Madness comes circling around. Ten-year cycles, as true as the sun will rise…’ Some things can send a heart spinning; others will crack it in two.

In a small town in rural Ireland, the local people have weathered the storms of economic collapse and are looking towards the future. The jobs are back, the dramas of the past seemingly lulled, and although the town bears the marks of its history, new stories are unfolding.

But a fresh menace is creeping around the lakeshore and the lanes of the town, and the peace of the community is about to be shattered in an unimaginable way. Young people are being drawn towards the promise of fast money whilst the generation above them tries to push back the tide of an enemy no one can touch…

Review

I highly recommend not only reading this, but also giving the audio version a twirl. It gives the read/listen a slightly more in person cultural feel. The ingrained identities that can be accurately experienced, the individuality of characters and personas more accurately felt - I can imagine this being a great theatrical experience.

Although this can be read as a standalone, it is a follow-up to The Spinning Heart, I am of two minds whether to suggest reading one before the other. I think the two books work both in tandem and as solitary experiences, not sue whether that was intentional or it's just a case of whatever takes your fancy when it comes to the happenstance of literary beauty that captures people, thoughts, culture and country in such an intensely personal way.

Ryan certainly knows how to sit inside his characters heads, hearts and souls - and equally how to place the reader beside them as they rage, toil, reminisce, regret, weep and sometimes wander to a point called peace. In a sense the word peace, and indeed this book, becomes an exploration and even explanation of living, of life and both the inner and outer daily barter we have with ourselves.

The whole book is also a six degrees of separation woven web of human interactions and reactions. How each person responds and reacts differently depending on on their own frame of reference and subsequently can have a completely different response someone else. That sounds like something or nothing, but when told with such an eloquence and insight it becomes an amazing read. 

Buy Heart, Be at Peace at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Doubleday; pub date 8th August 2024 | Hardback | £16.99. Buy at Amazon com.