This is a generous mosaic of a novel about the staying power of love and pride and history and family. While Donal Ryan is never afraid of all the meanness and sorrow of the world, he also manages to excavate the thrilling beauties that hold us together. He manages, with wit and grace, to illuminate the anonymous corners of human experience and get at the underworld of our souls. * COLUM McCANN *
Donal Ryan is one of the finest novelists writing today and this is a gem of a novel. Full of humanity, humility, humour, drama and mystery, his characters are so vivid you feel they are sitting outside, waiting for him to conjure them to life. He writes with grace and precision, with love indeed, about who we are and why, about family history and the ghosts we carry. A haunting, exquisite masterpiece. * RACHEL JOYCE *
From its opening pages, this book exerts a quiet, propulsive hold over its reader. The three generations of Aylward women will break your heart and then put it back together again. It's a beautiful, compassionate novel - Donal Ryan at his inimitable best. * Maggie O'Farrell *
'[A] master storyteller. The most vivid characters, so full of life. You read each short chapter wondering how he's crammed in so much heart and wonder, while the story itself ramps up to its quietly devastating and marvellous conclusion.' * KIT DE WAAL *
I was thunderstruck by this exquisitely beautiful and powerful novel. This is writing of shimmering truthfulness, empathy and authority by the most consistently brilliant Irish writer of his generation. * JOSEPH O'CONNOR *
Beautifully poised, sad, poetic and human....I loved every single line. * IAN RANKIN *
'Donal Ryan repeatedly broke my heart and then soldered it back together with words of molten gold. The Queen of Dirt Island is a powerful tribute to mothers in all of their ferocity, tenderness and guilt. I loved this book with my whole patchwork heart. Eloquent, beautiful and threaded throughout with a joyful savage humour, a privilege to read, and re-read.' * LIZ NUGENT *
The Queen of Dirt Island is the work of a master writer in full flow. Donal Ryan is uncommonly perceptive at finding greatness in humanity's goodness. This is his best novel yet. * RONAN HESSION *
Donal Ryan makes writing look effortless. He manages to capture the world and all its broken beauty in one tiny corner of Ireland. His characters feel like people you've always known. His words seem to sing off the page. * JAN CARSON *
Simply sumptuous...This soaring tale of four generations of women in a small Irish town is bursting with humour and pathos. The Queen of Dirt Island contains shocking twists, deaths, reflections on how fiction misappropriates lives and a sharp portrait of how love can lift and twist the human heart....glorious. * INDEPENDENT *
Beautiful, absorbing * Sunday Telegraph *
In gorgeous, graceful prose, Donal Ryan tells the story of four generations of women in this tender, joyful gem of a novel. * PAULA HAWKINS *
An endlessly surprising story of the heart's secret places, and what we hide there... This magnificent novel confirms Donal Ryan is a writer of rare and precious vision: he sees the world as it ought to be, and dares you to believe in it. * MICHAEL HUGHES *
A stunning portrayal of intergenerational family love and the complications of the human condition. I was swept up in the world of the Aylward women: in their power and pain and mostly, in their fierce resilience. A novel full of compassion and honesty, where love triumphs. The prose is pitch perfect. * ELAINE FEENEY *
Hymn to the warp and woof of life; celebration of the flip-flop way of family; soaring testimony to the endurance of the human spirit. And all delivered with his trademark compassion, empathy, humour and brio. A gift of a book. * ALAN McMONAGLE *
A compelling read * Sainsbury's Magazine *
Ryan's writing is like poetry and he has a real gift for creating characters who live in full technicolour. Highly recommend * Good Housekeeping *
In Ryan's hands the mundane and the everyday is transformed into a thing of beauty, thrumming with significance. * Refinery 29 *
