Strange Flowers by Donal Ryan
In 1973 Moll Gladney goes missing from the Tipperary hillside where she was born. Slowly her parents, Paddy and Kit, begin to accept that she’s gone forever. But she returns, changed, and with a few surprises for her family and neighbours.
Like all Donal Ryan’s novels, the writing is lyrical, beautiful and perfectly captures the sense of time and place in rural Ireland. No one manages to purvey the sense of loneliness and despair quite as wonderfully as he does. I have read all his previous novels and wasn’t disappointed with this one. As usual he has managed to create a set of characters and circumstances that are quintessentially Irish whilst at the same managing to be universal in their nature. I am not a fan of using the term ‘genius’ when it comes to writing but in the case of Donal Ryan, I am more than willing to make an exception.
