Like all good chroniclers of small town life, Donal Ryan is a gossip. In the wrong hands, power such as this can seem salacious—callous, even—but Ryan manages to wield his gift with such subtlety that, in 'The Queen of Dirt Island', he pulls off the impossible. He imbues his gossip with compassion. A similar approach was, of course, taken in Ryan's debut 'The Spinning Heart’; but unlike his other books, the focus here is centred squarely on one family, an approach which ultimately enlarges the narrative possibilities of the story rather than constraining it.
The Queen of Dirt Island is set over the course of four decades—from 1982 until the present day—and follows the fortunes of four generations of Aylward women; a close-knit family based in a fictionalised version of Ryan’s hometown of Nenagh, Co Tipperary. As you’d expect, a novel of this range takes the reader on a miniature pitstop tour of changing Irish attitudes over the years, with the character of Eileen being shunned by both her family and community for raising her daughter as a single parent, the dimwitted Chris being duped into paramilitary activity, then released under the Good Friday Agreement, as well as the simmering undercurrents of class, religion, misogyny, and domestic violence that still pervade Irish society today.
In this regard, it is tempting to compare Ryan’s work with other great Irish chroniclers of his generation - Colin Barrett, Claire Keegan - but where their work relies on humour and pathos to draw out their subjects, Ryan retains a fierce, almost allergic resistance to clarifying the rumour mill that sets his story in motion; even as it swirls around the heads of his protagonists. We see only what the Aylward women see, hear only what they hear, and because our empathy is with them all the way, the verisimilitude of those ugly rumours comes to matter less and less until all that we’re left with is a portrait of four women who love each other deeply.
This approach at times leaves the narrative teetering on the edge of banality; at other times, sentimentality. But Ryan is such a masterful stylist that at the right moment, he can introduce a conversation or set of events which changes the course of the narrative dramatically; leaving the reader to fill in the blanks and untangle fact from fiction as the voices of Nenagh’s residents grow dimmer and dimmer. It’s good to have Donal Ryan back again, and to be sat down at the table gossiping with his creations.
The Queen Of Dirt Island is published by Penguin
