Heart, Be At Peace

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 - Independent

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 . . . With any luck we will be back in this small place of vast intrigue to pick up with its people again a decade from now. - Financial Times

[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 - Guardian

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