Heart, Be at Peace
By Donal Ryan
ISBN 9780-85-7525239 194 pp. Doubleday Press 2024
Review by Terrence Kenneally
It has been 10 years since Donal Ryan’s debut novel The Spinning Heart was written. In a small town in rural Ireland, County Tipperary, not a lot seems to have changed, or maybe it has. Economic collapse, lack of employment, toxic masculinity and how the actions of one man affected a community marked the town previously. The town’s main employer (a construction company) closed and the owner moved away without giving his workers their pay.
In Donal Ryan’s Heart, Be at Peace, we meet many of the cast from the past, as 21 voices, some years further on, with a new set of troubles affecting the community – drugs. Well financially, but not everyone is happy about the activities they are involved in and their loved ones who might be affected. Suspicion, mistrust, grief, and regret prevail, and all manner of connections have been formed and remade.
Bobby, the main character, connects each character and chapter. Many of the characters reflect on their own lives in relation to Bobby, who many consider the most moral and decent man in town.
Other characters include Denis (a self-proclaimed murderer who finds redemption through love and fatherhood), Millicent (a young woman trapped in a relationship with a drug dealer), Lily (her grandmother), Josie, Triona (Bobby’s wife), and a cast of inner connected characters from the small Irish town of Nenagh.
Heart, Be at Peace is its own book, and a different story, but its voices will be familiar to people who have read The Spinning Heart. From the way the novel is written, with short chapters from multiple character viewpoints, we can discern what happens next to some of those we meet along the way, as we imagine the implications of all that is revealed.
Heart, Be at Peace is a heartfelt, lyrical novel that can be read independently or as a companion to Donal Ryan’s multi-winning novel. The Spinning Heart was voted the Irish Book of the Decade. It is surely a TOP SHELF read.
