At the Heart of rural Ireland

Few, if any, writers today provide a voice for rural Ireland in the way that Donal Ryan does. He has, quite simply, been a literary sensation since the appearance of his first published novel, The Spinning Heart, a dozen years ago.

Now, he has taken the bold step of reimagining the lives of the 21 voices from that book, and has written another that is sure to be on every reader’s bookshelf this year, Heart, Be at Peace.

This is a book to delight, and anyone who enjoyed The Spinning Heart will revel in his latest work. All the stories are told in the first person, and the beauty of Ryan’s skill is that their voices will be loud and clear in your head.

Who is the man who so accurately portrays people we all seem to immediately recognise, have an affinity for, or even dislike intensely?

At the age of nine, Ryan and his family moved four miles away from Newtown into Nenagh. “It was a new world completely – it might as well have been Australia because it was such a different life, just moving from a village to a town. It’s amazing really when you think about it.”

Where he lives, comes from and works are central to Ryan’s world, providing a myriad of characters to portray. “Nenagh, as a rural market town, is a place I love. Everything I write is pretty much set in a kind of fictionalised version of North Tipperary. The topography is a little bit changed around.”

That sense of place, and a connection to home, meant that Ryan didn’t travel far, even when it came to college. He studied in Limerick IT, a place that he loved, initially studying civil engineering, and then marketing, before joining the civil service. His hunger for knowledge and education was not sated, and he went on to study law at night in the University of Limerick (UL).

Ryan constantly references his parents, his father Donie who died in 2017, and his mother Anne, who passed away last year. He credits them with instilling a love for literature.

“I was lucky as a young boy because we were a rural, working-class family, living in a housing estate, but my parents made sure the house was full of books. They had a talent for tracking down job lots in house auctions, really good books and very eclectic, but there were always books in the house.

“My sister and I were given carte blanche to read whatever we wanted to, except one book, Robert Graves’ I Claudius. That was because my mother happened to get a glimpse of the very salacious BBC adaptation, so she took against that book, though it was kept in the house. When I did eventually read it, I remember thinking, ‘oh, if my Mam knew I read this she’d go mad’.”

Good fortune

When it came to school, Ryan had the good fortune to have an English teacher who cemented Ryan’s love for books, and spotted an early talent.

“My only ambition, when I took to writing, was simply to do so for myself. No moment in my writing life has ever rivalled the one when I finished the last paragraph of my first novel. The feeling was just incredible.

“I thought about that book every single day of my life. On my very last day in school, my English teacher, Martin Slattery, said to me, ‘Ryan, will you promise me you’ll do something with the writing?’, and that was a profound moment.”

Early attempts at writing were, according to Ryan himself, a disaster, as he tried to “write in a slightly rarified voice, with a posh accent," and he knew in his heart that this was false.

When he discovered the ability to write in his own voice, thanks to his wife’s counsel, that was a turning point. He believes that “clarity and simplicity are the keys to a good story." Emphasising that point, Ryan went on to relate a funny story about one of his books.

“My parents received a letter from a man once, who was incensed that I had used two words in the novel that he had to look up. He said, ‘tell Donal that he is losing his audience’, suggesting that I was too keen to impress my new friends,” Ryan laughs heartily at this memory.

Taking his own advice, it is clear that Ryan is averse to any type of hyperbole, and is totally matter of fact. Back at his alma mater, UL, where he holds the position of Professor of Creative Writing, “just across the road from my house”, he is a happy man.

“UL is just such a lovely place, I become calm as soon as I drive through the gates in the morning, because it is just such a gorgeous campus. It is so green, and so verdant, and the Shannon flows through it. It is so beautiful.”

This is the eleventh year of the course, and Ryan’s dedication to it is deep. “I don’t like that phrase ‘punching above our weight’, because when it comes to literature, we are heavyweights. As far back as you want to look, we have been a literary nation, and we are vested in the art of storytelling, and doing it really well.” This comes from a man who is a storyteller first, but blessed with an ability to write it down.

Readers of a certain age will recall the late Maeve Binchy and her weekend columns in The Irish Times, and Ryan is flattered by any comparison to her modus operandi, people-watching. He cites one of her bestsellers, The Lilac Bus, as an influence.

“There is no greater joy than sitting and people watching in a hotel lobby,” he laughs, leaving me wondering who on the day of our meeting might feature in a future work.

How to relax: “Running, and I have an MG Roadster that I like to potter around with. I’m not a great mechanic, but I always had old cars, and I love working on them.”

Writers he reads: “Well, whoever gets sent to me in the post. You spend a lot of time reading your friends and contemporaries, as you might be asked for a quote about them. The last book I received was Fee [Fiona] Scarlett’s new book [due out in early 2025], which has a beautiful title, May All Your Skies Be Blue. She wrote Boys Don’t Cry, a fantastic novel.

“I love Stephen King, and when I read The Stand at about the age of 14, it had a lasting effect on me. First of all, I thought it’s so long and involved, but then when you broke it down it was simple.

“It was quite binary, a battle between good and evil, God on one side, and the Devil on the other. I couldn’t wait to get home to read, but I couldn’t tell the lads at school that I was going home to read a book!”

The next book: “I finished a novel a few weeks ago, and it’s gone to my editor and publisher. I am happy with it, and I am pretty much staying in the same area, keeping it local, with characters I know well. When the language and lexicon are so familiar to me, and so beloved to me, I can fashion any story from that place.”

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