Heart, Be at Peace - by Donal Ryan (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A novel about small-town Ireland that explores a community on the mend and the power of love and trauma to both bring people together and divide them"--

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Irish Book of the Year * Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction * Shortlisted for the Nero Novel of the Year * A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice

From one of the most acclaimed Irish writers today, a new novel about smalltown Ireland that explores a community on the mend and the power of love and trauma to both bring people together and divide them

"I said it before. Madness comes circling around. Ten-year cycles, as true as the sun will rise. . ."

In a small town in Ireland, the local people have weathered the storm of economic collapse and now look to the future: The jobs are back, the dramas of the past seemingly lulled, and although the town bears the scars of its history, new stories have begun to unfold.

But an insidious menace now creeps through back-alley shadows and into the lives of the townspeople. Old grudges fester and new ones arise. Young people are lured by the promise of fast money while the generation above them tries to hold back the tide of an enemy beyond their control. And the peace of this town is about to be shattered in an unimaginable way.

A stunning, lyrical novel told in twenty-one voices, Heart, Be at Peace reveals a community that together looks to overcome the betrayals, secrets, and grudges that can divide families, neighbors, and entire generations.

Review Quotes

An Post Irish Book of the Year * Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction * Nero Novel of the Year Shortlist * A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice

"Powerful. . .intimate." ―The New Yorker

"Ryan's sentences gleam, peeling the calloused skin of machismo to expose the vulnerabilities of his men, cutting against our expectations. . .Heart, Be at Peace moves with the lightness and felicity of a story collection, sifting relationships built on sand, pummeled by tides of human folly." ―New York Times Book Review

"Heart, Be at Peace is the perfect title for this Irish gem." ―The Washington Post

"[T]he structure of Heart, Be at Peace is exactly what makes it compelling. The tension and slow unraveling of the mystery at the heart of this chronicle of small-town and small-city Ireland today, fraught with problems created by drug dealers and scam artists, is brought to brilliant life through the intertwining of voices and the individual stories of protagonists and antagonists, heroes and villains, characters both peripheral and intrinsic." ―New York Journal of Books

"Spellbinding. . .a gripping story that is heartbreaking, funny and occasionally raunchy of a beaten-down but resilient community that embodies the best and worst of humanity." ―Associated Press

"[A] magnificent dive into the hearts, minds, and lives of a rural Irish community. . .Ryan's beautiful novel packs a quiet but powerful punch." ―Booklist

"An absorbing, empathetic story of a community in trouble." ―The Irish Times

"Ryan dives deep into his characters' hopes and grievances, drawing out their voices with such precision that you can almost hear their breath between words. . . .Ryan's prose is poetic but never florid, the book's pacing is perfect and the well-controlled plot has us holding on for revelation and an unpredictable denouement." ―Financial Times

"With lyrical prose and bolts of gentle humor. . .this beautifully crafted work offers much to admire." ―Publishers Weekly

"An astute mosaic. Add to that Ryan's gift for capturing the foolishness and fakery of human nature and the lyrical power of Irish small-town gossip . . . and you have a portrait of modern Ireland through a series of hard minds and sometimes kind hearts." ―The Independent

"[The novel is] a kind of simulacrum of life, as if we have been landed in this village, have a chance to overhear its inhabitants' most private thoughts, move from one house to another, sit in the pub, discover who believes who is to blame for what, and what can be excused or forgiven." ―The Guardian

"Beautiful and moving. . .serves up heartbreak and hope in equal measure." ―The Lady

"Heart, Be at Peace is a beautifully rendered novel about community, crime, secrets, love and the will to carry on. I'd read full novels about each of the characters I encountered in this slim, enticing book. Donal Ryan is a writer we should all be reading." ―De'Shawn Charles Winslow, author of In West Mills and Decent People

"This book is a whole world, and while I was living in it, its inhabitants felt as real to me as my own neighbors. Donal Ryan brilliantly brings a whole chorus of people to life and weaves their voices into an extraordinary symphony about how we love and harm and forgive each other." ―Caitlin Horrocks, author of Life Among the Terranauts

"It's all there. Donal's trademark big heart and understanding of what it is to be human, all of it on the page and somehow beyond it. I loved it from the first page to the last. . .there are more moments of genius in this book than I care to mention. Beautiful. . .a book full of love and hope, more needed in these days than ever." ―Kit de Waal, author of My Name is Leon

"Any new book by Donal Ryan is something to celebrate and Heart, Be at Peace is no exception. He is a powerful story teller immersed in all the intricacies of human relationships, and once again he brings us a novel with a heart as big as the community he describes. Clear-eyed, deeply ambitious, sharp, lyrical as always, by turns funny and terrifying, Donal Ryan shines his light in the darkest corners, and finds something for us to love. I am blown away by the ambition and scope of this exquisite piece of writing: Heart, Be at Peace is sublime in both its sentiment and beauty." ―Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

"This is Donal Ryan at his most assured, moving deftly between voices, fully inhabiting every character, breaking his poor readers' hearts. Every chapter's a tiny epic. Every sentence seems to sing. Ryan's writing is both of the moment and utterly timeless in its ability to capture the essence of what it means to be alive, to love, to grieve and cling to hope." --Jan Carson, author of The Raptures

About the Author

Donal Ryan is a novelist and short story writer from Nenagh, County Tipperary, Ireland. He has won several national and international awards for his fiction, and has twice been nominated for the Booker Prize. His work has been adapted for stage and screen and translated into over twenty languages. Donal is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Limerick, and he lives with his wife, Anne Marie, and their two children.