The Spinning Heart

I was hugely impressed by The Spinning Heart. There will be many novels which explore the effect of the crash on the people of Ireland but I can't imagine a more original, more perceptive or more passionate work than this. Outstanding.

John Boyne

Most beautifully written and plotted. What a writer! It is amazing to read about such grief and pain and yet end up elevated by the quality of the writing. A wonderful book.

Jennifer Johnston

…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 … There are echoes … of Patrick McCabe's stray sod country, though Tipperary-born 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. … a darkly persuasive debut.

John Boland, Irish Independent

Donal Ryan is the real deal … A brilliantly realised, utterly resonant state-of-the-nation landscape

Sunday Independent

Beautifully written… extraordinary reading… captured the essence of the sad part of what’s happening in Ireland. This book just got me by the throat. A stunning, stunning read… It comes with the highest imaginable endorsement from me... A modern literary masterpiece.

Ryan Tubridy, RTE Radio

The most significant book to come out of Ireland since Angela’s Ashes … has the smack of authenticity. I’ve read many good books this year – new and old – but this is my book of 2012.

Guy Pringle, Newbooks magazine

It is hard to believe that such beautiful but controlled writing could come from a debut author, but The Spinning Heart is just that. Each chapter is narrated by a unique voice from one member of an Irish community, building by the end of this slim novel a precise and fully formed portrait of the devastation of the financial crash on both a personal, private and public level. It is full of warmth and wit, but is also a haunting and a complex story. There’s murder, adultery, scamming and gossiping, alongside love and heartbreak, in this perceptive gem of a novel.

Emma Herdman, The Bookseller

Donal Ryan’s precise and evocative debut … is a textured account of a community as it was during a brief moment of time. … unexpectedly tender … Ryan’s prism of life and lives is compellingly humane. … This is an exciting, relevant and believable 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.

Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times

[A] beguiling debut. … This may be the work of a debut novelist, but it is one who reads plenty and knows his business. … His salty, damaged characters give voice to the anger and heartache of a town snared by Ireland’s collapse. For this, we are in his debt.

The Sunday Times

Funny, moving, technically inventive … serves as a microcosm for Ireland in the aftermath of the financial crisis. … 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.

Financial Times

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. … The unambiguous announcement of a genuine and apparently fully-formed new talent.

The Spectator

A formidable debut, with snatches of the savage comedy of Patrick McCabe and a wistful cadence all its own.

Daily Telegraph

Humane, funny, moving and relevant, this is extremely impressive stuff.

Daily Mail

Powerful and affecting . . . [a] superb, unforgettable and topical debut.

The Times

Funny, moving and beautifully written

Edna O'Brien

There’s a powerful sense of place and shared history binding Ryan’s many voices, their inner and outer selves, distilling a linguistic richness comparable to Under Milk Wood. . . . Ryan’s novel . . . 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

It’s furious, it’s moving, it’s darkly funny, it punches you right in the gut, the writing is effortlessly wonderful, and every one of the wide variety of voices rings utterly true.

Tana French, New York Times

Filled with light and shade, love and tragedy ... if it was a song you could sing it

Anne Enright