'This is a generous mosaic of a novel about the staying power of love and pride and history and family.' –Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon and Let The Great World Spinįrom the multi-award-winning and internationally bestselling author Donal Ryan, a searing, jubilant story about four generations of women and fierce love

The three generations of Aylward women will break your heart and then put it back together again.” –Maggie O'Farrell Ryan’s great skill is to fill in his canvas without the reader noticing the brush strokes being applied, moving characters like Chris’ towny wife Doreen, who never quite fits in, shockingly to the foreground when least expected.“From its opening pages, this book exerts a quiet, propulsive hold over its reader. The language subtly alters as Saoirse matures, taking in the ups and downs of Paudie and Chris, the Machiavellian machinations of Richard, and the young woman falling in and out of love and welcoming a new member to the household. That's not what men are for.' They're either a bit dim, like Saoirse's paternal uncles Paudie - who gets involved with The 'RA like a right eejit - and Chris, or love-interest Josh - a character who first appeared as a writer in Ryan's Strange Flowers, a book that shares a universe with this one, or they're boo-hiss villians like Eileen's bastard of a brother, Richard, who claims Eileen, 'a whore', broke his parents, or they're in and out - quite literally - like the unnamed famous singer who changes the course of Saoirse's life. 'You only get one life, and no woman should spend any part of it being friends with men. That being said, the men who are present in this world are somewhat surplus to requirements. As anyone who's even walked past the window of an Irish family home could tell you, these woman all care deeply for one another despite the language they hurl around and the somewhat unlikely relationship between Eileen and Mary is especially strong, united in love for Saoirse lost father. Her father is killed off on page two and the language cleverly describes the child’s eye view of the house she then grows up in with her tough mother Eileen, disowned by her own well-off family and working in the bookies' to make ends meet, and Eileen’s ever-present mother-in-law, Mary.

Lauded and loved Nenagh man Ryan’s sixth novel centres around Saoirse and four generations of her family on their small-town estate, so small it's not even in Ryan's Nenagh but outside it 'in a village that nobody'd ever heard of'.

The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan