The Thing About December by Donal Ryan – review

Donal Ryan's second novel, set in rural Ireland, is an exquisite tale of a man-child's struggle to make sense of a greedy world

Every so often, a writer comes along who cheers Ireland up, not because the books are cheerful – on the contrary, indeed – but because the writing enlarges a particular sense we have of ourselves. Claire Keegan is one such writer, John McGahern is perhaps the best known, and Donal Ryan is the latest addition to this distinguished line. He writes from the rural heartland in prose that always pushes for the truth of things. Ryan's language is colloquial and easy, but the central emotion is, for lack of a better word, dignified. His characters are large-hearted people in a small-minded world and this timeless theme is played out, not in misty boggy nowhere-land, but in a contemporary Irish space, where people talk on their mobiles and the halal meat plant has been recently closed down.

The Spinning Heart, his first published novel, was told from 21 different points of view and was set after the collapse of the Irish boom. It was the success of this book that brought his first, much rejected manuscript to light. The Thing About December is set while the bubble is still inflating and it is, for my money, the better book. It has only one voice, that of Johnsey Cunliffe, whose slow puzzlement burns through the story like the spark on a long fuse. The explosion, when it comes, is finely judged by Ryan, who is interested in what makes men kill other people or themselves. Maleness is experienced, by his characters, as an impossible state, a kind of accident waiting to happen. McGahern is the reference point here because masculinity is an issue for both writers, their characters are often in thrall to the figure of the father, and they are both interested in knowing how to escape that love, or what it might mean.

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