Some of the best contemporary Irish writing is about trying to come to terms with the financial boom and bust of the last decade. In his debut novel, The Spinning Heart, Donal Ryan writes about the construction frenzy of this period and what it cost so many people. Using varied voices, each chapter is told from a different perspective.
In one huge unfinished housing development, only two houses are occupied. Bobby, a builder, visits Réaltín there and starts doing odd jobs for her at no charge--at least, no money changes hands. It's that kind of a world now; everyone lives by his or her wits, no questions asked. The original moneymakers have all decamped, leaving behind broken lives, insurmountable debt and bleak futures.
"There's a red metal heart in the centre of the low front gate, skewered on a rotating hinge," Bobby says, describing his father's house. "It's flaking now; the red is nearly gone. It needs to be scraped and sanded and painted and oiled. It still spins in the wind, though. I can hear it creak, creak, creak as I walk away. A flaking, creaking, spinning heart."
The Spinning Heart is filled with hope, despair, poignancy and, sometimes, brutal disregard for fellow man--but it is all so beautifully rendered that the reader keeps hoping that, against all odds, someday all will be well. Ryan has painted a perfect portrait of these hardscrabble lives. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.