A Slanting Of The Sun: Stories Av Donal Ryan

<p><b>From the twice Man Booker longlisted author of <i>From a Low and Quiet Sea</i><br><br>''Donal Ryan, one of our most remarkable writers, </b>has produced a book of short stories of such visceral power that they hit you in the solar plexus.<b> He deals with the dark side of modern Irish life and produces sentences of titanic impact.'' </b><i>IRISH MAIL ON SUNDAY</i><br><br><br>An old man looks into the fearful eyes of a burglar left to guard him while his brother is beaten; an Irish priest in a war-torn Syrian town teaches its young men the art of hurling; the driver of a car which crashed, killing a teenage girl, forges a connection with the girl''s mother; a squad of broken friends assemble to take revenge on a rapist; a young man sets off on his morning run, reflecting on the ruins of his relationship, but all is not as it seems.<br><br>Donal Ryan''s short stories pick up where his acclaimed novels <i>The Spinning Heart </i>and <i>The Thing About December </i>left off, dealing with the human cost of loneliness, isolation and displacement. Sometimes this is present in the ordinary, the mundane; sometimes it is triggered by a fateful encounter or a tragic decision. At the heart of these stories, crucially, is how people are drawn to each other and cling on to love, often in desperate circumstances.<br><br>In haunting and often startling prose, Donal Ryan has captured the brutal beauty of the human heart in all its hopes and failings.<br><br>_________<br><br>''Donal Ryan is a heartbreaker, his quicksilver prose laced with ... wistful rhythms ... These breathtaking stories explore human love against an uneasy landscape of violence and desperation... Donal finds hope in dark corners.'' <b><i>DAILY MAIL</i></b><br><br>''Donal Ryan is a master of the magnetic first line ... His faithful subject is rural despair; the poetry of adversity, the baffling fortitude of intrinsically decent people ... This collection shows Ryan adding his own elastic yet distinctive voice to O''Connor''s impeccable tradition.'' <b><i>GUARDIAN</i></b></p>