The Thing About December was such a superb introduction to Donal Ryan last year that I was delighted to pick this novel up recently. While the story here does not flow at quite the same pace, the quality of Ryan's writing is abundant. Each word seems very deliberately chosen, and he writes with a lyrical intensity that few other authors can match. In this novel, each chapter is just two pages long. They all read (or could be read) almost as short stories in their own right. The common thread is the lives of four generations of women living together. The novel begins with the death of the matriarch's son (on the day that her granddaughter is born) and ends with her great-granddaughter setting off to America. In between, to read The Queen of Dirt Island is to appreciate how the fabric of (family) life oscillates—from hope to despair, from anger to joy, and also from hate to love. Throughout, the bonds only seem to deepen, and Ryan's point is that perhaps we should seek to treasure those things that are most important in life.
By Donal Ryan