I'd never heard of Donal Ryan before. However, from the number of award nominations this book has had, and the four full pages of glowing reviews before the book starts, it's fair to say that he's well thought of as a writer.
And from the evidence on offer in this book, that's easily understandable.
This is very short - only 180 pages - yet it manages to tell the stories of three very different men, and join the three stories, almost satisfactorily, together.
The first man is Farouk. He's a happily married doctor in war-torn Syria, with a young daughter. As the danger increases in his village and the fighting draws closer, he chooses to throw his lot in with a people smuggler and get him and his family to safety.
The second is Lampy, a bit of a simpleton no-hoper from the back end of nowhere, somewhere in rural Ireland. He drives a minibus for the handicapped at a local care home, taking them out for day trips.
The third is John. This is the first first-person narrative we hear. He's telling us about his life, counting down all his sins in a final confession.
There are a couple of other narrators in the last 30 pages, but they all serve to fill in the gaps in the stories we've heard to date, and to join the dots between them.
The ending of the story does rely rather too much on coincidence and the strangest minibus design in history. Plus, at one point our doctor character is described as taking a pulse with his thumb and diagnosing an old man's illness. As anyone who's ever been trained to take a pulse will tell you - YOU DON'T TAKE A PULSE WITH YOUR THUMB, your thumb has a palpable pulse in it. You can take a pulse from a marble statue with your thumb, it will be your own pulse. The fact that he diagnoses the old man with an irregular heart rhythm is not surprising since his own pulse is getting in the way. This guy should not be a doctor.
If you can forgive the minibus design flaws and the medical inaccuracy. this book works very well indeed. The prose is never less than very very good indeed. The first sequence in particular utlised very long run on sentences to good and strikingly beautiful effect. It was reminiscent in this way to Patience by Toby Litt, my first book for this year. I think Toby's prose was better overall though.
Lampy's section, after a while, had me reading in a strong Irish accent. It was similar in flow to Farouk's story, but with the different dialect backing it up. The only thing that I found segregated the writing in John's segment was the first person narration.
However, despite the flaws this is a very well written and fairly moving book. I'm not sure it's as heartbreaking as the reviews n the opening pages suggest, but this is just my hard hearted opinion.
Still an easy 8/10
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