Heart be at Peace, Donal Ryan
Heart Be at Peace is Donal Ryan’s seventh novel and a follow up to his award-winning debut The Spinning Heart, first published in 2012. It can be read either as a companion and follow up to The Spinning Heart but is equally gripping as standalone fiction. Ryan has said he wanted to capture the people and voices of the towns familiar to him, and each of the monologues that make up the book are vivid and delicately drawn, the characters flawed and fraught.
It follows the same 21 people ten years after we first met them, now facing new threats to the safety of their town and its children. Illegal industries are flourishing in the wake of economic collapse and the men running them act with impunity. Whilst the familial tensions established in The Spinning Heart have intensified, so too have the retributions and the hard-won loyalties.
The plot of the novel comes together incrementally, and the different voices in each chapter provide alternative perspectives on previous events. This cleverly enables insight and reasoning for what happens across the two books, encouraging the reader to extend their empathy to those who murder, kidnap and betray. No misdeed in the ‘crazy village’ exists in a vacuum; all the characters are interconnected but the plot never feels contrived nor the writing too deliberate. When the pieces of the narrative puzzle all fit together, the symmetry feels well earnt and satisfying. The voices of Bobby Mahon and his wife Triona start and end the book respectively, in a nod to their unique morality which seems to wrap itself around the town. Theirs is a tender example of love, of sacrifice and commitment.
Be it the curse of the Irish writer, leaning on their rich literary and folkloric heritage, or simply Ryan’s poetic and sensory use of language, but simple phrases read as prophetic and are used sparingly and delicately so as to be profound and affecting. One character who lives as an outlier to the town, banished and branded as a witch, is Lily, (whose story deserves a whole book on its own) who hauntingly predicts her own demise and closes by saying: ‘Sure wasn’t I at least the author of my own tale? And if you can say that as you depart this world, you can say a lot.’
Heart be at Peace is beautiful depiction of fragility, desperation and devotion, and whether you have read Spinning Heart or not, there so much to discover in this book – a truly brilliant read.
Editorial Picks
