From the twice Man Booker longlisted author of From a Low and Quiet Sea

''Donal Ryan, one of our most remarkable writers, has produced a book of short stories of such visceral power that they hit you in the solar plexus. He deals with the dark side of modern Irish life and produces sentences of titanic impact.'' IRISH MAIL ON SUNDAY


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.

Donal Ryan''s short stories pick up where his acclaimed novels The Spinning Heart and The Thing About December left off, dealing with the human cost of loneliness, isolation and displacement. Sometimes this is present in the ordinary, the mundane; sometimes it is triggered by a fateful encounter or a tragic decision. At the heart of these stories, crucially, is how people are drawn to each other and cling on to love, often in desperate circumstances.

In haunting and often startling prose, Donal Ryan has captured the brutal beauty of the human heart in all its hopes and failings.

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''Donal Ryan is a heartbreaker, his quicksilver prose laced with ... wistful rhythms ... These breathtaking stories explore human love against an uneasy landscape of violence and desperation... Donal finds hope in dark corners.'' DAILY MAIL

''Donal Ryan is a master of the magnetic first line ... His faithful subject is rural despair; the poetry of adversity, the baffling fortitude of intrinsically decent people ... This collection shows Ryan adding his own elastic yet distinctive voice to O''Connor''s impeccable tradition.'' GUARDIAN