Book review: Strange world, familiar sadness

'Dooneen' is a highly political novel. It depicts desperate communities bound together in communal action, in conflict with a neglectful, violent, and self-serving state 

Keith Ridgway’s powerful fictional gift is to render the contemporary Ireland of Dooneen both recognisable and strange, as if we are in a world that we instinctively know but do not fully understand.

• Dooneen
• by Keith Ridgway
• Fitzcarraldo Editions, £14.99