Book review: Weaving together the singular and collective tales of North Tipperary

Donal Ryan gives a voice to people seldom featured in contemporary fiction, including older men and women, the intellectually disabled, and eccentric outsiders

Donal Ryan updates the stories of characters and setting from his 2009 debut ‘The Spinning Heart’ in this new offering.

• Heart, Be At Peace  
• Donal Ryan 
• Doubleday, €18.99 

Within minutes of starting this novel, your spirits will soar as you immerse yourself in the fast-paced, compelling story. 

The novel features the voices of 21 characters, telling their story in the first person. They all featured in Donal Ryan’s hugely successful 2009 debut, The Spinning Heart.

You learn about the narrator and their story through hearing their voices loud and clear. It is an immensely clever way to write a novel.

Donal Ryan’s territory is North Tipperary, Nenagh, and the surrounding villages. 

He nails the homely atmosphere of these small places, where people lead quiet, unobtrusive lives — until all hell breaks loose. 

He gives a voice to people seldom featured in contemporary fiction, including older men and women, the intellectually disabled, and eccentric outsiders.

The Spinning Heart was set in 2008 in the aftermath of the economic crash. Then, 10 years later, the community is under threat from drugs. 

Four young thugs in a blacked-out car run the operation, the drugs distributed by younger lads on scooters. 

Addiction is already claiming victims, and those foolish enough to fall into debt are dealt with by gang-related violence.

The novel opens as Bobby Mahon is visiting his terminally-ill mother-in-law in hospital on his way home from work. 

Another visitor, Willy, “a yahoo in a stripy tracksuit” is upsetting people by his drunken roaring and blocking the sliding door entrance. 

Bobby strides out past the security guards, and immediately Willy is grovelling and apologising. But, Bobby tells us, “He never expected my left elbow to meet his throat the way it did…I got him right on the windpipe”. 

Bobby is established as essentially a good man, but tough. He refers to his friend Seanie Shaper as “A sneaky lowdown rat bastard”, and their troubled relationship is a recurring theme.

Another thread is the return home of builder Pokey Burke after seven years away. It is told by his father, Josie, another good man. 

Pokey took off when his workers realised that he was cheating them by not paying in their social insurance money. 

This time he sets up a language school in Limerick as a front for a drug-running operation, secretly using his father’s name as a director because he, unlike Pokey, had never been declared bankrupt.

As always in Donal Ryan’s work, the women are all strong characters, far more effective than most of the men. 

Mags, a civil engineer married to a woman; Triona, Bobby’s saintly wife; Réaltín, a sharp-tongued accountant and mother married to the rat-like Seánie Shaper.

 Most touching of all is the story of Lily and her grand-daughter Milly who has fallen for the drug dealers’ leader.

Local dialect is used with loving precision. A man is referred to as “a secondary school principal now inside in Limerick”, while Seanie lies when he says “I have that picture deleted”, referring to an incriminating photo of Bobby leaving an Amsterdam brothel.

Mobile phones play a major role in most characters’ lives.

In fact, so richly textured are these monologues that there is a danger of losing track of the ingenious plot which they reveal.

Ten years is a long time in a reader’s life, and like many people, I suspect, I had forgotten most of the characters in the first book; a brief list of their names and relationships would have been helpful.

However, the claim that this sequel can be enjoyed without having read the first book is perfectly true. It just takes a bit of work on the reader’s behalf. 

There is a special pleasure in working it out for yourself, from the information provided in the text, and enjoying the surprisingly up-beat ending.