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Winner of the An Post Irish Novel of the Year 2020
Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award'You have to truly love people to write like this' RACHEL JOYCE
'One of the greatest novels of this century'
SUNDAY INDEPENDENT'Gorgeously wrought' GUARDIANIn 1973, twenty-year-old Moll Gladney takes a morning bus from her rural home and disappears.
Bewildered and distraught, Paddy and Kit must confront an unbearable prospect: that they will never see their daughter again.
Five years later, Moll returns. What - and who - she brings with her will change the course of her family's life forever.
Beautiful and devastating, this exploration of loss, alienation and the redemptive power of love reaffirms Donal Ryan as one of the most talented and empathetic writers at work today.
_________
'Outstanding ... Tender and beautifully written'
INDEPENDENT'All the beauty and sorrow of life can be found in these pages'
KATHLEEN MACMAHON'Exquisite . . . Beautiful'
ANNE GRIFFIN, author of WHEN ALL IS SAID'Ryan gathers together the fragments of broken lives and makes us something new and beautiful from them'
RÓNÁN HESSION, author of LEONARD AND HUNGRY PAUL
About the author
Donal Ryan, from Nenagh, County Tipperary, has published seven number one bestselling novels and a short story collection. He has won several awards for his fiction, including the European Union Prize for Literature, the Guardian First Book Award and six Irish Book Awards, and has been shortlisted for several more, including the Costa Book Award and the Dublin International Literary Award. He was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2013 for his debut novel, The Spinning Heart, and again in 2018, for his fourth novel, From A Low and Quiet Sea. The Spinning Heart was voted Irish Book of the Decade in 2016. In 2021 Donal became the first Irish writer to be awarded the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. His most recent novel, Heart Be at Peace, won both Novel of the Year and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, and was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Nero Book Awards. His work has been adapted for stage and screen and translated into over twenty languages. Donal has lectured in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick since 2014 and lives in Castletroy with his wife Anne Marie and their two children.
Summary
Winner of the An Post Irish Novel of the Year 2020
Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award
'You have to truly love people to write like this' RACHEL JOYCE
'One of the greatest novels of this century' SUNDAY INDEPENDENT
'Gorgeously wrought' GUARDIAN
In 1973, twenty-year-old Moll Gladney takes a morning bus from her rural home and disappears.
Bewildered and distraught, Paddy and Kit must confront an unbearable prospect: that they will never see their daughter again.
Five years later, Moll returns. What - and who - she brings with her will change the course of her family's life forever.
Beautiful and devastating, this exploration of loss, alienation and the redemptive power of love reaffirms Donal Ryan as one of the most talented and empathetic writers at work today.
_________
'Outstanding ... Tender and beautifully written' INDEPENDENT
'All the beauty and sorrow of life can be found in these pages' KATHLEEN MACMAHON
'Exquisite . . . Beautiful' ANNE GRIFFIN, author of WHEN ALL IS SAID
'Ryan gathers together the fragments of broken lives and makes us something new and beautiful from them' RÓNÁN HESSION, author of LEONARD AND HUNGRY PAUL
