Donal Ryan's novel "The Queen Of Dirt Island" is a love story. Now, I do not mean in the traditional romantic sense. Rather, it's about the love that for generations of women in the Aylward family ...

In 2014 Donal Ryan published a novel in the U.S. called “The Spinning Heart” about a rural Irish town after the 2008 financial collapse. It was narrated by a chorus of voices, one per chapter, and at ...

An error has occurred. Please try again. With a The Portland Press Herald subscription, you can gift 5 articles each month. It looks like you do not have any active ...

‘All We Shall Know’’ is a dwarf star of a novel: small, dark, impressively dense. This isn’t to say that it’s difficult. This is the Irish writer Donal Ryan’s third novel, each a work of literary ...

The late William Trevor could write stories so vivid it was like flash photography. Boom, they leapt to life, filled with so much recognizable detail and color it was like an indelible thumbprint or a ...

After Donal Ryan’s award-winning debut, “The Spinning Heart” was published in 2012, he moved on to other novels, but the characters who populated that book lingered. “They were very present in my head ...

Each month, we will pick a new Irish book or a great book by an Irish author and celebrate the amazing ability of the Irish to tell a good story for IrishCentral's Book Club. Throughout January, we’ll ...

Donal Ryan is probably still best known for his first novel, "The Spinning Heart," which came out of the blue in 2012 to win accolades and prizes, including Ireland's Book of the Year award. Since ...

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with author Donal Ryan on where the idea for his new book The Queen of Dirt Island came from and how he completed... Growing up in a kitchen full of women inspired Donal ...