Donal Ryan - 'The Spinning Heart'

Having recently been nominated for the Booker Prize, 'The Spinning Heart' has garnered a lot of praise of late and deservedly so. The fact that the book was initially rejected by 50 publishers is surprising in the extreme - I was hooked right from page 1.

The story is set in small-town, rural Ireland and each chapter is told solely from the point of view of one of the town's inhabitants. The story that pieces itself together over the course of the book is massively compelling and puts paid to any fears that this is just some literary parlour trick.

In its mere 150 pages there exists here a brilliantly described, bittersweet universe and an angry polemic against the greed that has brought most of Europe to its knees. There is much more going on than just raw invective however - Ryan's ear for ribald, naturalistic speech is magnificent and frequently hilarious. On reading it I was instantly reminded of some of the more colourful and somewhat tragic characters of my youth growing up in small-town North Cork and at times I was not sure whether to laugh or cry in response to some of the stories contained within. The interior dialogues are at once both hilarious and gorgeously poetic. There is also hope I would say in its pages as well as deep, deep sorrow.

If an established writer had written this it may well have been acclaimed as a masterpiece, but the fact that it is a first novel is staggering. I look forward massively to reading more from Ryan in the future and would hugely recommend this to all readers.

Here is an interview with the author.

Karen Black RIP

 

I was saddened to hear Karen Black passed away a few days ago (obituary here). She worked with amany of the finest directors of the American 'New Wave' and was usually an odd but particular presence in any film I have seen her in at least. She is probably most famous for her part in 'Five Easy Pieces' opposite Jack Nicholson and was somewhat typecast as a troubled, dumb blonde in her heyday. I remember as a teenager first seeing her and being at once sympathetic to her vulnerabilities, and lazy eye, but also being weirdly repulsed by her for some reason. She certainly made a lasting impression anyhow and this weekend I decided to give one of her films a watch, 'Night of the Locust' from John Schlesinger, 1975, and my what a film it is. It must be one of the darkest representations of Hollywood ever made, almost Jodorowskian at times, like a proto 'Mulholland Dr.' and full of Freudian undertones relative to 'Civilization and its Discontents'. I have never seen anything quite like it - I hugely recommend it to lovers of the surreal and bizarre and Karen Black - fare thee well.