Review of THE QUEEN OF DIRT ISLAND by Donal Ryan

 4 Stars

Donal Ryan is one of my must-read authors.  This novel, like his others, is exceptional.

Beginning in 1983, it focuses on four generations of Aylward women living together in rural Tipperary.  There’s Nana (Mary) the widowed matriarch; Eileen, her widowed daughter-in-law; Saoirse, Eileen’s daughter; and Pearl, Saoirse’s daughter.  In brief, vignette-style chapters, we follow their lives:  their joys, sorrows, loves, heartbreaks, and struggles.  We see “a family of women living in a small house together and battling through their lives.”

Life is not easy for the women living in a small town with many small-minded, censorious people.  Because Eileen had a premarital pregnancy, she is estranged from her family and is called a slut and a whore.  Saoirse’s reputation suffers likewise.  And then there are the other events that intrude on their lives:  one relative’s involvement with the I.R.A., another’s intimidations, and another’s mental illness.  And there’s more than one death and suicide. 

What the book celebrates is the love and loyalty of the women.  Regardless of what is happening, the house is a refuge where they protect each other, “all wrapped up together in one bundle” from the sadness and cruelty of the world.  Of course, theirs is a “comfortable dysfunction” where they love each other with a “gruff constancy.”  Nana and her daughter-in-law shout at an threaten each other so they might seem to be mortal enemies, but “They had a way of being around one another that was based on each having a natural grasp of the other’s particularities and peccadilloes; they nursed one another’s wounds without ever seeming to do so, they fed one another’s spirits.”  I loved a scene where Nana hugs Eileen like a mother would hug a crying child, “as if to take from that child all their pain, and make it her own.”

Saoirse is the narrator and she makes Nana and Eileen the most sharply focused characters, but they are all fiercely loving and supportive.  Eileen inherits Dirt Island which she describes as “A bit of soggy fucking grass and a dirty pond” but it proves to be truly valuable.  The women too could be dismissed, but it becomes apparent that they are all queens.  Nana rules the roost; she can punish someone without saying a world.  Beneath her loud, foul-mouthed rancour, Eileen behaves like the titular queen and holds her head high.  Saoirse conducts herself with dignity in the face of others’ hostility.  And Pearl is described as “a perfect little queen, fat with love” who “ruled her little queendom with a kind of replete joy.” 

In contrast, men come across as weak and foolish.  Nana’s surviving sons, Eileen’s brother, and Saoirse’s love interest do not conduct themselves in an admirable fashion.  Nana describes men dismissively:  “they’re all sucky-babies.  You have to give them what they want or they’ll kick and scream.”  Later she tells her granddaughter, “You only get one life, and no woman should spend any part of it being friends with men.  That’s not what men are for.”

This book just feels so authentic and is written in a mesmerizing style.  The Chapter entitled “Immaculate” consists of only two sentences, yet it’s perfect!  And I love the novel’s messages.  If only we could all remember that “What could be known about people in their privacies?  No eyes could see beyond a closed door or into a heart.”  If only we could all live in “a quiet state of loving receptiveness and acceptance” of each other’s caprices.