I am fast becoming a fan of Donal Ryan. He writes stories about people who live simple lives in rural Ireland. However, all lives have their own complexities and problems.
Paddy and Kit Gladney lived a quiet, hardworking life tending the farm of the wealthy landowners, the Jackmans and Paddy was also the local postman. There was respect on both sides. When their only daughter Moll catches a bus and disappers from their lives without a word they are devastated. She appeared a meek, obedient young woman and this was perceived as totally out of character. It is five long years before she returns with little explanation untill a stranger arrives in the village seeking the family. How she had spent the past 5 years then comes to light. The reason for her sudden departure thoughis only revealed to the reader in the latter section of the book.
Although this was a slow burner, I found myself drawn into and captivated by this tale and oh what a beautiful cover. ( )

This is now the third book I have read by the Irish writer Donal Ryan, and I almost always have the same experience: the man can write beautifully and his stories show enormous empathy, but there is always something lacking in the focus of his storylines, it's as if Ryan can never maintain that focus for long. This is also the case here. The first two parts of this book are of a particularly high standard, with a very empathetic sketch of the drama that happens to the Irish couple Paddy and Kit when their 20-year-old daughter Moll runs away, and the restrained joy when she returns 5 years later. Especially the depiction of Irish rural conditions (the ubiquitous Catholicism, the fear of everything foreign, the intolerable submissiveness of the social inferior to the superior, etc.). And those image-rich, rhythmic sentences. What a marvel.
But then the story suddenly takes a turn and the tone changes: Moll's black man, Alexander, who was initially treated very racist, is integrated without any problems, he builds up a successful career in an incredibly fast time and the family seems like a textbook model. Very implausible. Ryan then zooms in on the adult son of Alexander and Moll, his struggle with life, incorporated into a self-written story with an African and biblical slant, the meaning of which escapes me. Finally, the last two chapters offer a series of flashbacks with revelations of what was really going on, and here Ryan draws on a number of Irish taboos such as sexual repression and lesbianism, again linked with unlikely plot twists.
No, I can't rhyme it: the high-quality first half, and then the messy second half. It's as if Ryan couldn’t decide what book he actually wanted to write. A pity. ( )

Strange Flowers is a recent release from Irish writer Donal Ryan. I've previously read The Spinning Heart (2012); The Thing About December (2014); and From a Low and Quiet Sea (2018) all of which deal one way or another with cultural change in Ireland. In a setting that begins with the 1970s, Strange Flowers explores the arrival of a black man from London looking for his Irish wife in a small, insular village, and the catalyst for these events is a #MeToo moment for a young woman whose emerging sexuality is not acceptable within the rigidities of Catholic Ireland. None of this is known when the book begins, so there are spoilers in this review.

Moll refuses to live life with the passivity of her parents. When the book opens, she has gone, left for a destination unknown, and for reasons not explained. She does not contact her parents for five years, leaving them in a kind of abyss, mourning the loss of their only child without knowing what has actually happened or even if she is alive or dead. The irony is that the daily routines of Catholicism offer them some kind of solace, when it is, in part, the strictures of the church that impel Moll's flight, and cause her to make choices that are not ever really right for her.

The other reason for her flight is social. Her parents, Kit and Paddy Gladney, are tenant farmers, beholden to their wealthy neighbours for their home and financial security, such as it is. The Jackmans own the farm and the house, and they are at the top of the social hierarchy in the village. For people in this village of Knockagowny in County Tipperary, it has always been that way. So it comes as no surprise that Lucas Jackman has a sense of entitlement over all that he surveys. For Moll to take the kind of action that she's entitled to make when she's been assaulted, would ruin her parents' livelihood and have them turned out of their home. Given the choice, her loving parents would have done anything and lost everything to protect her, but that's not the choice that Moll makes.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/08/24/strange-flowers-2020-by-donal-ryan/ ( )

Told in beautiful prose, this is the story of Moll Gladney, who at the age of twenty, leaves her home in 1973 rural Ireland, and disappears. Her parents, Paddy and Kit are left bereft. Five years later Moll returns.

A tale of love, loss, secrets and family relationships. there is much to this story. I struggled through a portion of the book ,"Song of Songs". But overall a very worthwhile read. I'll look for more by Donal Ryan. ( )

Strange Flowers by Donal Ryan is a 2020 Penguin publication.

This is my first book by this author and from what I could tell this book had been very well received. It is supposed to be a lovely family drama, set in Ireland, and it sounded like something I would like.

I decided to add audio to my Kindle book, to complement my reading experience.
Unfortunately, I did not have the same positive experience as many of my reading peers.

The story is slow, and the shifts in chapters do not explicitly make clear the various time passages. The narration was too brisk, with little emotional inflection. For a short book, it took me a long time to finish it.

I was bored, confused by the stories Joshua wrote, which weren’t always clear in the audio portions, and kept trying to figure out who was blind because it was hard to tell when the story started or ended. It all seemed to bleed together- so eventually, I stopped the audio, switched back to the ebook, which helped. But after all those struggles, I was just ready to get it read and move on to something a little less depressing.

I didn’t get the ‘lovely’ part and was very disappointed at the turns the story took. I am not going to address the religious allegory as I’m not entirely sure what the author was getting at.

Overall, this wasn’t the right book for me, I guess. It’s a quiet book- which is good when I’m in the mood for that type of novel- but mostly I found this one to be either bland or utterly depressing. I’m an outlier this time around. ( )