The Queen of Dirt Island

The uplifting number 1 bestseller about the roots that bind family, from the prize-winning author of Strange Flowers

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The Queen of Dirt Island

By: Donal Ryan

Narrated by: Emma Lowe

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

From the multi-award-winning author of the number one bestseller, STRANGE FLOWERS, a searing, jubilant story about four generations of women and fierce love.

The Aylward women of Nenagh, Tipperary, are mad about each other, but you wouldn't always think it. You'd have to know them to know - in spite of what the neighbours might say about raised voices and dramatic scenes - that their house is a place of peace, filled with love, a refuge from the sadness and cruelty of the world.

Their story begins at an end and ends at a beginning. It involves wives and widows, gunrunners and gougers, sinners and saints. It's a story of terrible betrayals and fierce loyalties, of isolation and togetherness, of transgression, forgiveness, desire, and love. About all the things family can be and all the things it sometimes isn't. From the prize-winning author of Strange Flowers and The Spinning Heart, The Queen of Dirt Island is an uplifting celebration of fierce, loyal love and the powerful stories that bind generations together.

'Donal Ryan is giving us characters that we haven't seen in Irish literature before' RODDY DOYLE

'Ryan's work has set a benchmark to which other writers will aspire' JOHN BOYNE

'I think you have to truly love people to write like this' RACHEL JOYCE

© Donal Ryan 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Donal RyanEmma LoweTransworld Digital

Family Life

Fiction

Genre Fiction

Historical Fiction

Literary Fiction

Heartfelt

Feel-Good

Thought-Provoking

Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Heartfelt Feel-Good Thought-Provoking

Critic reviews

This is a generous mosaic of a novel about the staying power of love and pride and history and family. While Donal Ryan is never afraid of "all the meanness and sorrow of the world," he also manages to excavate the thrilling beauties that hold us together. He manages, with wit and grace, to illuminate the anonymous corners of human experience and get at the underworld of our souls.

Donal Ryan is one of the finest novelists writing today and this is a gem of a novel. Full of humanity, humility, humour, drama and mystery, his characters are so vivid you feel they are sitting outside, waiting for him to conjure them to life. He writes with grace and precision, with love indeed, about who we are and why, about family history and the ghosts we carry. A haunting, exquisite masterpiece.

From its opening pages, this book exerts a quiet, propulsive hold over its reader. The three generations of Aylward women will break your heart and then put it back together again. It's a beautiful, compassionate novel - Donal Ryan at his inimitable best.

Beautifully poised, sad, poetic and human....I loved every single line.

I truly enjoyed The Queen Of Dirt Island from its jolting first chapter to its calm, graceful conclusion. Now I'm on to Strange Flowers.

Ryan's writing is so musical, so easily heard, that your eyes will dance through its pages.

'[A] master storyteller. The most vivid characters, so full of life. You read each short chapter wondering how he's crammed in so much heart and wonder, while the story itself ramps up to its quietly devastating and marvellous conclusion.'

'Donal Ryan repeatedly broke my heart and then soldered it back together with words of molten gold. The Queen of Dirt Island is a powerful tribute to mothers in all of their ferocity, tenderness and guilt. I loved this book with my whole patchwork heart. Eloquent, beautiful and threaded throughout with a joyful savage humour, a privilege to read, and re-read.'

I was thunderstruck by this exquisitely beautiful and powerful novel. This is writing of shimmering truthfulness, empathy and authority by the most consistently brilliant Irish writer of his generation.

The Queen of Dirt Island is the work of a master writer in full flow. Donal Ryan is uncommonly perceptive at finding greatness in humanity's goodness. This is his best novel yet.

Most relevant

First the narrator: fantastic. She caught each person so well. I can’t imagine how she didn’t laugh sometimes.

These women, wholly recognisable to me and many more, are exceptional in their honesty and unfettered brusqueness. That a man wrote this is even more impressive. He suspect he grew up with some strong women around him.