EXCERPT: He asked me about his mother, my Eileen. If she'd suffered much. I told him no, she went gently enough. By the time they found the shadows on her lungs, at the end of that summer four years ago it was too late and she knew if she gave battle it would be in vain. I remembered that he loved mustard, and that he preferred white bread, and that he only ever had a bare skim of butter on one slice and none on the other. I had good ham in the fridge and fresh bread, like always. I gave him sugar in his tea, two spoons of it, the way he always had it years ago. I used always to give out to him over it, telling him it was a woman's way of drinking tea, white with milk and poisoned with sugar.
He was hungry. He hardly left a crumb, God help us. I brought him over a cut of tart then. This was bought in a shop, I told him. It won't be like your mother's. He frightened the life out of me with the sound he made all of a sudden, a long high moan that cut through the air and seemed to shake everything; my eyes blurred at the sound of it and the walls of my ears vibrated. And he shook and he shook with the sobs and I sat looking at him and I could easily have reached my hand across to him. I could have stood up and gone to him and put my two arms around him. But I just sat there, looking, embarrassed, wishing he'd go away again and leave me be. God forgive me.

ABOUT 'HEART, BE AT PEACE': Some things can send a heart spinning; others will crack it in two. In a small town in rural Ireland, the local people have weathered the storms of economic collapse and are looking towards the future. The jobs are back, the dramas of the past seemingly lulled, and although the town bears the marks of its history, new stories are unfolding. But a fresh menace is creeping around the lakeshore and the lanes of the town, and the peace of the community is about to be shattered in an unimaginable way. Young people are being drawn towards the promise of fast money whilst the generation above them tries to push back the tide of an enemy no one can touch…

MY THOUGHTS: Told by 21 different voices in a small Irish village and twenty-one interconnecting short stories, Donal Ryan paints a picture of life in a small Irish village, contrasting the current troubles with the past.

The advantages and perils of living in a small village are obvious - everyone knows everyone and their business. Where in the past it was religious alliances that either held people together or divided them, today it is drugs. The dealers, the users, the anti-drug brigade. It is a war on its own and one that is fought in every town across the world. But life goes on around it and Donal Ryan examines and chronicles these lives - the first loves, marriages, betrayals, friendships, deaths, personal shortcomings, successes and, always in the background, the drugs.

These stories, culminating in one dramatic denouement, are beautifully written. These are ordinary people brought to life with wit, honesty and a lyrical beauty.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.1

#HeartBeatPeace #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: Donal Ryan is a novelist and short story-writer from Nenagh, Co. Tipperary. He lives in Limerick with his wife Anne Marie and their two children.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Random House UK, Transworld Publishers, Doubleday, via NetGalley for providing a digital ARC of Heart, Be at Peace by Donal Ryan for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

As a long-time fan of Donal Ryan, I was eager to dive into Heart, Be at Peace, but sadly, it didn’t live up to the promise of The Spinning Heart. The first book beautifully captured the everyday lives of a small rural town in Ireland, with shocks and surprises unfolding naturally. In this sequel, however, everything feels far too dramatic, with each character playing a leading role. The constant twists, turns, and explosions (spoiler alert) make it feel more like a soap opera than a believable portrayal of real life.

While there’s no shortage of material in today’s world to draw from, the story just doesn’t feel grounded or authentic. The natural charm of the first book is replaced by a whirlwind of over-the-top events, making it exhausting to read. Did The Spinning Heart even need a sequel? In this case, less might have been more.

Even though the book is short, it was a slog to get through. The twist at the end, which should have been a moment of revelation, fell flat and was entirely predictable. It seems Ryan leaned too much into sensationalism, losing the human touch that made his earlier work so compelling.

Thanks to NetGalley, Publishers and Author for an ARC of Heart, Be at Peace.

Donald Ryan is an amazing storyteller, and this book is no different. Short stories, that are as much of a novel in themselves, that tells of the lives of people in a small village. Ryan has a beautiful way of writing in different prose for each person, so you can almost believe they are each written by a different person.
I enjoyed this book hugely, I found it hard to stop reading after each story, it just keeps you held in. The stories and people end up being intertwined which makes it even more interesting.
After I've read this, I will go back and reread, and make take notes to keep each person and their links in my head.
Highly recommend

Donal Ryan remains to be my favourite author of all time, back with another wonderful book. For the first time (I believe), he has released in this book somewhat of a sequel - the sequence of events over the years after the story of Spinning Heart. But instead of a direct sequel, it involves other people from the town with the Spinning Heart story mentioned once or twice.
He writes people like no other author can, and uses the most emotive and lyrical language, making reading this an absolute pleasure.

I don't know how I have missed him but this was my first introduction to Donal Ryan's writing. It left a huge impact on me. The voices in the story were note perfect, and each life- no matter how outwardly mundane- was conveyed in the most poetic way. Written with huge compassion and wisdom, it is a book about ( I think) redemption . Thank you Netgalley for introducing me to this wonderful writer.

I had not discovered this author before but have been blown away by his writing. So lyrical and mesmerising. The book is the same story told from different peoples perspectives. At times it was difficult to work out what was happening and in fact I read the book twice to totally understand the story- however I enjoyed the writing so much it was a pleasure to read it twice! I have subsequently read more by Donal Ryan and I am delighted to have discovered him.

Fans of Donal Ryan will not be disappointed with this sequel to his award winning “The Spinning Heart”. While it is a sequel this book also works as a standalone.
The author sums up rural Ireland in a most poetic yet realistic manner. Similar to “The Spinning Heart” this novel is told in 21 voices all with their own story to tell yet with individual voices. I would suggest keeping a pen and paper handy to note the characters and connections.
A joy to read.

Thanks to NetGalley.co.uk and the publishers for this ARC.

An intriguing but at the same time some what fragmented read! Lots of discombobulated characters which at points made the reading hard & sometimes hauntingly disturbing. This is a book which will not suit every reader but for those like myself who do read it, there will be many questions still unanswered about some of it's characters . #NetGalley, #GoodReads, #FB, #Instagram, #Amazon.co.uk, #<img src="https://www.netgalley.com/badge/8a5b541512e66ae64954bdaab137035a5b2a89d2" width="80" height="80" alt="200 Book Reviews" title="200 Book Reviews"/>, #<img src="https://www.netgalley.com/badge/ef856e6ce35e6d2d729539aa1808a5fb4326a415" width="80" height="80" alt="Reviews Published" title="Reviews Published"/>, #<img src="https://www.netgalley.com/badge/aa60c7e77cc330186f26ea1f647542df8af8326a" width="80" height="80" alt="Professional Reader" title="Professional Reader"/>.

This seems to be an unpopular view, but I really did not enjoy this book.
I didn't like the writing style at all, and I found there were too many characters who I really struggled to remember and differentiate. That made it difficult to find the stories engaging, as I spent so long trying to remember who was who, and how they linked. I would not have finished this if I hadn't received an advance copy.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK for my advance copy - all opinions are my own.

I tried my best with this book. The good points are that Donal Ryan's prose is fabulous and yet again he perfectly captures the nuances of small town Irish people and life. Unfortunately I found the construction of the book with each short chapter by one of twenty-one different characters and voices very difficult to follow. Yes all the characters and parts of the story overlap and converge but telling the story this way is so splintered and disjointed that I found it incredibly difficult to follow and keep track of who was who and what connection all the characters have to each other. I also felt I wasn't getting to know any of the characters as the chapters were so short which did not help me stay engaged with the book. As a result I got halfway through before giving up as I was totally lost. I will go back to it again in the future after I have read The Spinning Heart as this book is a companion book and I feel that readers should definitely read the latter before attempting Heart, Be at Peace or else they could be totally lost like me.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Donal Ryan is quickly becoming one of my favourite writers. This I think does beat THE QUEEN OF DIRT ISLAND for me, I am sad to not be able to read it for the first time again! Brilliantly constructed characters, weaving in stories that cross the entire cast, I loved it.

I came across Donal Ryan for the first time last year when I read The Queen of Dirt Island and immediately fell in love with his writing. So, needless to say, I was very excited to pick up Heart, Be at Peace, which is being marketed as a companion piece to Ryan’s 2012 award-winning debut, The Spinning Heart.

Let me state straight off that I really struggled with this as a standalone. The vignette-style format, comprising the voices of 21 separate but interlinked characters, repeatedly referenced events from the past that made me feel out of the loop. I didn’t know these characters, and the brief stories did little to round them out for me. I couldn’t picture them in my head or figure out how they related to each other. In truth, it seemed more like a book of 21 short stories, rather than a homogeneous novel.

I’m left feeling frustrated. I expected and wanted to love this, but I’ve already forgotten the characters and have no real idea what the point of the book was. I’ve decided to come back to it at some point after reading The Spinning Heart to see if this makes a difference.

For now, as a standalone, I can only give this 3 stars.

I was sent an advance proof copy of Heart, Be at Peace by Donal Ryan to read and review by NetGalley. This is a beautifully written, emotional piece of writing with chapters that are vignettes from characters told in the first person. At first they seem to hold no bearing to one another but the further into the book you go the more the names bind together. The author’s style of writing is quite unique and one that I really like - as I did in a previous novel of his The Queen of Dirt Island. I will certainly be reading more of his work in the future. Well worth the maximum 5 stars and more.

“I said it before. Madness comes circling around. Ten-year cycles, as true as the sun will rise”. Just as the central crisis of The Spinning Heart was the economic recession, the central crisis in Heart, Be at Peace is a kind of corruption brought about by the young people in the village becoming pulled into the drug trade, but that corruption is also visible at other levels, such as a scheme that takes advantage of immigrants coming to the area. In several of the characters, this feeling of corruption of what had been an ordinary, decent town feels like a betrayal, and that also feels connected back to the betrayal they felt when one of their own left so many of them with nothing after the crash.

Bobby, who had tried to put his old boss's wrongs right in The Spinning Heart also feels he has a part to play in Heart, Be At Peace. Bobby's children are getting older and he doesn't want them pulled into the get rich quick mentality that is getting the other youths mixed up in criminal activity, and as he looks around at the other older men in the community he realises if no one else is going to act, he must, and with that comes danger, “the terrible conviction that had a hold of him about his obligations as a man”.

Both books are about greed, in a way, and how that temptation will then ultimately be punished, by fate or more likely by other people, and they're also about how people go about doing the right thing, or what makes them a good person, a good parent, a good member of their community. But the books are also about the private battles people think that only they are facing, and the prisons people make for themselves too, and the impossibility of communicating this. One of Ryan's characters, desperate to break out of the patterns he feels stuck in, says that he wishes he could:

“marshal his thoughts into something creative, something worthwhile, something that comes from me and exists outside of me and might make a difference, however small, to someone else. Some other miserable fucker who thinks too much might read it or look at it and realize they're not the only one living in a prison of their own making inside their own skulls”.

I obviously loved Heart, Be At Peace and I don't know how he managed to pull off less of a sequel and more like the ideas of The Spinning Heart transposed onto a new decade, but it doesn't quite live up to the first book to me. I think the bar is too high when the original book seemed to have come out of nowhere, and is like nothing you've read before, because a sequel of course is going to be like the original and therefore just can't be so unique. Perhaps it's wrong to judge it as a standalone book, and I think that's why it has to be read as a companion to The Spinning Heart only, but Heart, Be at Peace is a beautifully written, thoughtful and moving companion at that.

Like The Spinning Heart, Heart, Be at Peace consists of a series of internal monologues by twenty-one different characters – men and women – each with a distinctive voice. It’s described by the publishers as a ‘companion novel’ to The Spinning Heart that can be read as a standalone. Personally, I think you get a richer reading experience if you’ve read The Spinning Heart because you’re learning about the continuing impact of events in the earlier book, as well as catching up with characters who are already familiar to you and seeing what they have made of their lives in the intervening years.

For some of the characters, what they’ve made of themselves is not much. Others have come out of their experiences stronger and wiser. Their stories sometimes involve dark themes, such as mental illness and there’s often violence, or its legacy, just under the surface.

Bobby was essentially the ‘hero’ of The Spinning Heart and he has pretty much the same role here. He is almost universally admired by his community. ‘Bobby is one of those rare men who measures himself against the wellbeing of the people around him. If there’s a problem he takes it personally and does his damnedest to solve it.’ He worked hard to help the town recover from the failure of the local building company that was the focus of the first book. He’s a regular visitor to his ailing mother-in-law and a faithful husband, despite seeming evidence to the contrary. He’s also shown forgiveness towards a man who, given the circumstances, you’d think he should hate. Perhaps it’s because Bobby came so close to acting in the same way himself.

Pokey Burke, the man responsible for the bankruptcy of the building company is still around and has found a new outlet for his devious ways, aided by an unwitting dupe. His role as villain of the piece has been usurped by Augie Penrose, the local drug dealer. Bobby feels a responsibility to take action out of fear for his children. In fact the urge to act is so strong it risks taking him down a path he has tried to resist, haunted by the memory of his violent father. As it turns out, there is someone with an even stronger motivation for ridding the community of the purveyors of the vile trade, just one of the many connections between characters and events.

If this sounds like the book is all about Bobby, it’s not. Each of the other characters has something to contribute although, as is to be expected, some resonate more than others. We learn about their hopes and fears, doubts and regrets, their successes and failures. We also get insights into other characters, and to events past and present. There are confessions, revelations and new perspectives. And there’s the odd touch of humour too since, let’s face it, most of us have some funny little ways unique to us.

As in The Spinning Heart, the final voice we hear is Bobby’s wife, Triona, the woman who knows him best. ‘I know what he’s capable of and what’s beyond him. I know his goodness better than he knows it himself.’ Full of compassion and understanding it means the book concludes on a note of optimism.

I appreciate the polyphonic structure of the book may not work for every reader, but it did for me. I felt the characters really came alive on the page even, possibly especially, the flawed ones. My introduction to Donal Ryan’s writing was From A Low and Quiet Sea. Now, having read The Spinning Heart and this book, I’m eager to explore the rest of his back catalogue.

I loved the writing style and the melancholic vibe of this book. I read the first one and it was good to see the same characters back and how life was treating them.
I wouldn’t say you go into this one hoping for an uplifting read though.

🇮🇪 REVIEW 🇮🇪

Heart, Be At Peace by Donal Ryan
Release Date: 15th August

📝 - In a small town in rural Ireland, the local people have weathered the storms of economic collapse and are looking towards the future. The jobs are back, the dramas of the past seemingly lulled, and although the town bears the marks of its history, new stories are unfolding. But a fresh menace is creeping around the lakeshore and the lanes of the town, and the peace of the community is about to be shattered in an unimaginable way. Young people are being drawn towards the promise of fast money whilst the generation above them tries to push back the tide of an enemy no one can touch…

💭 - I first read Donal Ryan’s “From a Low and Quiet Sea” back when I started reading again, and I loved it. So when I saw this one available on Netgalley it was a no-brainer. And it was absolutely the right decision. Donal Ryan has such a beautiful way with words, and his creation of characters is really up there. This one especially, tracking through people living within a small town Irish community, highlights how well he can create a such distinct characters who fit together to form a real community. While it was somewhat difficult to keep up with all the connections, it didn’t feel like I missed out on much of the story when I couldn’t remember who was who. A really brilliant and pretty short read, so definitely worth picking up when it’s out next week.

#heartbeatpeace #donalryan #newrelease #bookreview #irishfiction #irishliterature #netgalley #bookstagram #bookreviewer #arcreview #bookrecommendations #irishauthors

This latest novel from acclaimed Irish writer Donal Ryan updates the reader with the characters we met first in The Spinning Heart. It can be read as a stand-alone volume but I feel that it works better if the reader is already acquainted with the characters and their back stories, and I would suggest doing so. I’m not actually convinced that Ryan should in fact have revisited this small Irish community as I didn’t feel that the novel had the same magic that the earlier one did. 21 separate narratives, 21 distinct voices, but perhaps here not quite so distinct, and coming cold to the book could make reading it quite challenging trying to keep track of everyone. Here those 21 vignettes start to feel formulaic, and I wonder why Ryan felt drawn back to his characters. Publisher suggestion, maybe? Bobby Mahon is again the beating heart of the novel, as the community is once again threatened by outside forces, although here the solution that Bobby works towards is less convincing. Ryan is a great writer, there’s no denying that, but I still question whether he should have attempted to revive the magic.

Donal Ryan is the best living contemporary Irish writer today. This novel comprising linked stories is told beautifully with reference to characters first seen in The Spinning Heart. Through the voices of these 21 characters the reader is taken on a journey of life in a rural Irish community. I highly recommend this book to lovers of contemporary Irish literature. With thanks to Random House UK/Transworld and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review Heart, Be At Peace.

What an incredible book. I recently reread The Spinning Heart in preparation for the publication of Heart, Be At Peace and was once again blown away by Donal Ryan's writing. He has such a wonderful talent; the ability to capture the depths and multitudes of human emotion. His new novel is no different.

Told through 21 distinct voices, this is the story of a contemporary and changed Ireland; specifically a rural County Tipperary community. We visit in on the characters we met in The Spinning Heart, and although time has moved on, their grudges and resentments linger. And now they have new challenges to contend with, and it speaks volumes about the state of the nation of Ireland. I was gripped by their tales, and I found it difficult to put this book down. The language and dialogue is uniquely Irish, and the novel encompasses everything from wider dangers to small domestic concerns. Despite it's modest page count, this is an ambitious novel that achieves plenty. I loved it.