Donal Ryan

A novel that's eccentric and experimental, dramatic and emotional, funny and bizarre — yet constrained.

But we’re only a quarter of the way through the book, with plenty more surprises, hairpins and revelations to come. This crossing of the beams has a detrimental effect on the book. In some respects, the story involves her discovering more and more family members and other connections she didn’t know she had, most of whom have no good news to deliver. It’s a family story, and families don’t have single plot lines, but as we go through, it becomes increasingly clear that Saoirse is the heart of the book. Typically for Ryan, this uneasy comedy comes juxtaposed with pure darkness, as the girl who wants to meet Paudie is the Baudelaire-quoting, self-dramatising Breedie Flynn, victim of scurrilous school graffiti (“Breedie Flynn rides her da”) and the target of a tragic end. But at the start of the book there are only three women: grandmother Nana, mother Eileen (Nana’s daughter-in-law), and Eileen’s daughter Saoirse, who is born on the first line of the first chapter, and whose father dies in a car crash on the next page.