Stories of Irish rural despair from the Guardian first book award winner
Donal Ryan is a master of the magnetic first line. They are usually brief, and either riveting or puzzling. “The world is filled with unwelcome words” begins a story about a lost wedding ring and a failing camera shop. “True as God” begins another, and another again: “The sky the day we shot the boy was clear and blue.”
There are acres of sky in A Slanting of the Sun. Even when it passes unmentioned, its temperamental mien can be felt, and characters frequently find cause to gaze upwards. This is Ryan’s third book and first short-story collection, though his debut novel, The Spinning Heart, could have been packaged as stories: for each of its 21 chapters, Ryan introduced a new narrator, inhabited a new voice. It won the Guardian first book award in 2013, and was longlisted for the Man Booker prize.
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