Strange Flowers: The Number One Bestseller

Description

The extraordinary story of a family devastated by a sudden disappearance and transformed by a miraculous return from the award-winning author loved by David Nicholls, Kamila Shamsie and Sebastian Barry. In 1973, twenty-year-old Moll Gladney takes a morning bus from her rural home and disappears. Bewildered and distraught, Paddy and Kit must confront an unbearable prospect- that they will never see their daughter again. Five years later, Moll returns. What - and who - she brings with her will change the course of her family's life forever. Beautiful and devastating, this exploration of loss, alienation and the redemptive power of love reaffirms Donal Ryan as one of the most talented and empathetic writers at work today. 'You have to truly love people to write like this' Rachel Joyce 'One of the greatest novels of this century' Sunday Independent 'Gorgeously wrought' Guardian

Donal Ryan is from Nenagh in County Tipperary. His first three novels, The Spinning Heart, The Thing About December and All We Shall Know, and his short story collection A Slanting of the Sun, have all been published to major acclaim. The Spinning Heart won the Guardian First Book Award, the EU Prize for Literature (Ireland), and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards; it was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize, and was voted 'Irish Book of the Decade'. His fourth novel, From a Low and Quiet Sea, was longlisted for Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2018. A former civil servant, Donal lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. He lives with his wife Anne Marie and their two children just outside Limerick City.

Here is love as a weapon and a balm. Love as faith, fate and redemption ... a gorgeously wrought book - compassionate without dissolving into nostalgia * Guardian * Endlessly surprising and incredibly moving * David Nicholls * A triumph ... Ryan slowly and beautifully reveals the way that even broken people can open the door fully to the truth of themselves * Independent, Best Books of 2020 * His moving story of love and loss deserves to win a host of awards. It's an outstanding read * Sunday Express * I think you have to truly love people to write like this * Rachel Joyce * A triumph of quiet but devastating power, by some distance the best novel I've read so far this year -- Joseph O'Connor A big-hearted, beautiful work of art, full of truth and intensity * Kit de Waal * Classic Ryan; poignant and atmospheric storytelling ... quiet but intermittently explosive * Observer * I knew Donal Ryan's latest would be good and I was right - it's a risky act of imagination that works, and the sentences are as beautiful as ever -- Sarah Moss * The Times * The lyricism of Ryan's prose, laced with compassion, is astonishing -- Best Irish Novels of the Year * Irish Independent * With each new novel Donal Ryan's ink seems to sink deeper into the page. In Strange Flowers he gathers together the fragments of broken lives and makes us something new and beautiful from them * Ronan Hession, author of Leonard and Hungry Paul * A book so exquisite in its language it pushes me to want to write better ... you will love the quiet world of Paddy & Kit Gladney and all it is their daughter Moll brings to their door. Beautiful * Anne Griffin, author of When All Is Said * A beautiful, almost unbearably moving novel. Donal Ryan's compassion shines through every word he writes * Louise O'Neill * This is a novel to savour, for its mastery of language, its power of storytelling and its sure hand as it covers the sweep of time. Irish fiction was in a great place already, but Donal Ryan has gone and raised the bar again. All the beauty and sorrow of life can be found in these pages -- Kathleen MacMahon The lyricism of the prose can be pitch perfect, placing Ryan among the great writers of rural Ireland such as John McGahern and Mary Lavin * Sunday Times * It is the sweetest, gentlest story of love ... each character so tenderly evoked * Saga Magazine * Ryan's beautifully written story reads like coming home and is a breath of fresh air -- Best Novels of 2020 * Image Magazine * Tender and beautifully written ... We read this outstanding book in one sitting and will definitely return to it again * Independent * What a beautiful book, I loved it * Sinead Morrissey * Beautifully observed Tipperary setting and tenderly created characters telling a story of loss and redemption ... Love permeates Ryan's work * Irish Times *