With the clocks shift back last weekend, there’s no denying that the Autumn is well and truly upon us. But with the changing of the seasons and the shortening of the days comes ample opportunity to curl up with a good book, and if this week’s Eason Book Club is anything to go by, Donal Ryan’s is a corker.
A Slanting of the Sun is the former civil servant turned full-time writer’s first stab at short stories, and as Mary O’Rourke told Pat at the very outset of October’s Book Club segment on The Pat Kenny Show, the collection was a huge hit with herself, Katherine Lynch, and Brian Kennedy.
“Oh, I just love it,” Mary said. “I adored it. It’s going to be very dull today, because we all loved it. Love, love, love.”
Love turns out to be the theme arcing across the collection, which includes a number of very diverse and very engaging stories. An old man looks into the fearful eyes of a burglar left to guard him while his brother is beaten; an Irish priest in a war-torn Syrian town teaches its young men the art of hurling; the driver of a car which crashed, killing a teenage girl, forges a connection with the girl's mother; a squad of broken friends assemble to take revenge on a rapist; a young man sets off on his morning run, reflecting on the ruins of his relationship, but all is not as it seems.
Katherine Lynch gushed over the quality of Ryan’s writing, singling out The Squad as her favourite. “But I can’t really say that I had a favourite because they were all so well written,” she added.
Mary was more taken by The Long Puc, the tale of an Irish priest in the Middle East, who teaches hurling to a group of young men, and watches in increasing desperation as ISIS consumes them one by one. “I just loved the localism of it all, that real localism that is inherent in every single story.”
The former cabinet minister was truly taken by Donal Ryan, telling Pat how much she admired his perseverance having been turned down by publishers nearly 50 times before his debut novel, The Spinning Heart, was published to much acclaim.
“I saw him being interviewed,” Mary said. “Well, first of all I think I heard him being interviewed in the programme here. And we had the book at that time, and I said, ‘He sounds real good.’ And by chance, a couple of days later I turned on afternoon television, and there he was. And I love him twice. And now I read the book, I love him forever.”
It was a clean sweep among the panel, as Brian Kennedy also raved about the book and Ryan’s prose. “To me, as a writer he is the closest we can get to somebody like John McGahern in his ability to really capture rural Ireland.”
“When I had him on the show,” Pat admitted, offering his take on Donal Ryan, “He was most unassuming, but very entertaining.”
Later on in the segment, Pat went on location to visit a real book club in action, paying a call to Fiona in Greystones, whose book club has been running for a decade, and all started when a group of women and mothers making the school run realised a shared love of books.
The club, which enjoys ditching book talk to share their lives over a nice glass of wine, will read anything, but enjoy taking a stab at books based in different countries – though as one of their members has impaired vision, they prefer to have the option of the book being available in audio version.
For Pat’s visit, the club read Dear Cathy... Love, Mary, a collection of letters between two 18-year-old friends in the early 1980s, reprinted in the book as a celebration of youth, womanhood, and friendship.
November’s choice falls on Mary O’Rourke, and her decision will be revealed live on air early next week. Mary will choose from the following four books: Tim Pat Coogan's 1916: The Mornings After, Jim McGuinness' Until Victory Always, Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings, and Edna O'Brien's Little Red Chairs.
