All We Shall Know

May 22, 2017
Ryan (The Spinning Heart) crafts a beautiful morality play that recalls the pastoral dramas of William Trevor or Edna O’Brien. When we first meet Melody Shee, she is 33 years old and 12 weeks pregnant by a 17-year-old Irish Traveller named Martin Toppy; now, deserted by her husband, Pat, and with Martin nowhere to be found, Melody is left alone to contemplate her shame and her unborn child, even as “dying seems as unreasonable as living.” But her spirits are revitalized by a friendship kindled in the Travellers’ camps: 19-year-old Mary Crothery, a free spirit who “speaks in streams” and whose own scandalous divorce has triggered a vicious feud. Scorned by their respective communities, these two women come to rely on one another and save each other’s lives in unforeseen ways. But as Melody nears her due date, she recalls another betrayal, that of a childhood friend, and wonders whether she is “a woman divorced from decency, without restraint,” destined to fall short of all who love her. In this story of moral redemption and blood rivalries, Ryan is fair to each of his characters, as well as vivid in his evocation of Traveller culture. The result is a lush and lively novel that fascinates from its opening words to its tender last lines.

Starred review from May 15, 2017
Set in contemporary Ireland, this is a novel of self-sacrifice, penance, and circumscribed possibilities for happiness, narrated with great compassion and written with elegant lyricism.At the age of 33, Melody Shee finds herself pregnant and under a moral cloud. The father of her child is not Pat, her husband of a decade, but rather Martin Toppy, a 17-year-old she had been tutoring. Martin is a Traveller, a member of an ethnic group similar to though distinct from the Roma, and the Traveller subculture plays a major and fascinating role in the novel. Travellers tend to set themselves apart from the larger community, and their children are often not integrated into the educational system--hence the need for people like Melody who can tutor them. Enraged by Melody's infidelity, not least because their own relationship had yielded only miscarriages, Pat leaves home, and Martin soon disappears as well. Ryan structures each chapter as a week in Melody's pregnancy, beginning with week 12 and ending with the birth of her son and a postpartum grace note. Melody narrates the novel, and her consciousness is at its core as she moves from despair and suicidal thoughts to guilt and the need for penance to self-acceptance and a willingness to put others' needs ahead of her own. Desperate for emotional support during this grueling time, Melody turns to Mary Crothery, a young Traveller woman with whom she develops an intense and quasi-romantic relationship. Mary and her family are deeply involved in Traveller power struggles, and her engagement in these affairs results in violence and blood vengeance. Throughout the term of Melody's pregnancy, Mary remains stalwart, and having her nearby gives Melody someone to care for. Mary's presence also gives Melody an opportunity for a form of displaced penance for something that happened when she was a teenager. We learn through flashbacks that Melody's best friend, Breedie Flynn, committed suicide when Melody and others turned against her during a volatile time, and Melody hopes to atone for her mistreatment of Breedie by nurturing Mary. Emotionally intense, deeply engaging, and profound.

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June 1, 2017
Melody Shee is problematically pregnant. The father of her unborn child isn't her husband and former high-school sweetheart, Pat, with whom she's suffered miscarriages of much-wanted pregnancies, but a boy of actual high-school age. For a year, Melody tutored 17-year-old Martin Toppy, from a family of nomadic, native Irish Travellers. Then, after their tryst, Martin and his family left the caravan site where they lived in Melody's small town. In seeking him, Melody meets Mary Crothery, a young woman who knows him. As Melody's marriage falls apart, her pregnancy progresses, and painful memories of losses and regrets fizz up to the surface, she takes easily to caring for Mary, who is a shame to her family with a broken marriage of her own. Ryan (The Thing about December, 2014) follows Melody along the mysterious, changing trails of her memories as she tries, with considerable effort, to somehow right her life while giving truth and depth to her feelings of anger, guilt, mourning, and the love, ever complicated, that's hardest to give herself.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2017

At 33, Melody Shee is pregnant--not by husband Pat but by the 17-year-old Traveller boy she had been teaching to read. Now she's alone with only Traveller girl Mary for help. From the author of The Spinning Heart, long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and winner of the Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards.

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