![]() As you’d expect, a novel of this range takes the reader on a miniature pitstop tour of changing Irish attitudes over the years, with the character of Eileen being shunned by both her family and community for raising her daughter as a single parent, the dimwitted Chris being duped into paramilitary activity, then released under the Good Friday Agreement, as well as the simmering undercurrents of class, religion, misogyny, and domestic violence that still pervade Irish society today. The Queen of Dirt Island is set over the course of four decades-from 1982 until the present day-and follows the fortunes of four generations of Aylward women a close-knit family based in a fictionalised version of Ryan’s hometown of Nenagh, Co Tipperary. A similar approach was, of course, taken in Ryan's debut 'The Spinning Heart’ but unlike his other books, the focus here is centred squarely on one family, an approach which ultimately enlarges the narrative possibilities of the story rather than constraining it. In the wrong hands, power such as this can seem salacious-callous, even-but Ryan manages to wield his gift with such subtlety that, in 'The Queen of Dirt Island', he pulls off the impossible. ![]() Like all good chroniclers of small town life, Donal Ryan is a gossip. ![]()
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