The Thing About December

July 15, 2014
Hapless Johnsey Cunliffe lurches through life in contemporary Ireland, experiencing the deaths of his parents and facing an uncertain future.Ryan structures the novel in 12 chapters, each set in a different month and collectively taking us through a calendar year in Johnsey's life. Most months start with a short reminiscence about his late father, who had lots of homely wisdom and observations about the changing seasons. Johnsey has a dead-end job at a local co-op, loading supplies and working at the sufferance of Packie Collins, who hired him as a favor but rails against his general uselessness. To make life even worse, on the way home from work each day, Johnsey is tormented by Eugene Penrose and his thug friends. Life begins to change for Johnsey in February when his mother dies, and in April (after all, the cruelest month), Eugene viciously attacks Johnsey, so much so that he lands in the hospital for a period of several weeks, blind and with broken bones. There, he meets a nurse he at first knows only as "Lovely Voice" and a fellow patient called Mumbly Dave, whose jaw has been temporarily wired shut. These two new acquaintances have a profound effect on Johnsey's life, even after he recovers his sight and gets out of the hospital. He finds out the nurse's name is Siobhan, and she begins to visit him (as does Mumbly Dave) at his home. The local council's change in zoning laws makes the poor farm Johnsey inherited extremely valuable, and Mumbly Dave and Siobhan begin to feud over the most appropriate disposition of Johnsey's property.Cunningly written, the novel gives us a glimpse into the underside of modern Irish life.

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Starred review from May 15, 2014

Ryan (The Spinning Heart, which was longlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize) returns with another stunning novel that turns a character's mind out onto the page. In this work (short-listed for The Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award), the innocent and painfully self-conscious Johnsey Cunliffe finds his cocooned rural Irish life suddenly disintegrating. Daddy has died of cancer. Mother can barely muster the energy to even try to cope, and soon she joins the parade of those tearing up Johnsey's safe world. He's exposed to the terrifying responsibility of owning land that's in demand for a local real estate development plan (difficult for Johnsey when even using a microwave is a mystery). The locals "know" that he's holding out for a huge sum for the farm, a stubbornness that's half-based, they believe, in not wanting them to prosper. The violence that ensues has the upside of making Johnsey some friends, but Ryan's talent with ambiguity will make the reader worry that even those who seem to care were sent by the on-the-make townsfolk. The writing in this novel is simply amazing, Johnsey's panicked thoughts that he can't switch off, try as he might, are telegraphed in rambling sentences that will at times make readers cry and at others, laugh in delighted recognition. VERDICT For all lovers of literature and of the madness of rural entanglements.--Henrietta Verma, Library Journal

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2014
Johnsey Cunliffe is an only child so cosseted by his loving parents that he's naive about the ways of the world and called an eejit in his small Irish town. But when his parents diehis father from cancer, his grieving mother soon afterhe's bereft, confused, and lonely, befriended only by a couple known to Johnsey, as they were to his parents, as Herself and Himself. Then the classmate who bullied him for years engineers a brutal beating of Johnsey, leaving him temporarily blind and hospitalized. Here he meets Siobhan, the enthralling nurse he calls the Lovely Voice, and the also-injured Mumbly Dave. Home from hospital, Johnsey lands in the midst of controversy precipitated by the rezoning of his family farm, leading to him being portrayed as money-grubbing when he wants only to protect his legacy rather than sell it to spur the town's economy and making him wonder whether his new friends are true. Written before Ryan's award-winning debut, The Spinning Heart (2013), this novel is set in the same town a decade earlier, capturing the spirit and vernacular of its place and time and taking readers into the mind of a man struggling to get along in a world he can't quite comprehend. Stunning.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)