The Irish are amazingly good at telling stories. As Ryan writes in this short novel, "Some stories a man can glory in. Some stories were told for kudos or for laughs." Donal Ryan tells us three separate stories of men who are trying to puzzle a life together after the loss of loved ones that have left them with a wounded heart; a Syrian refugee, a young nursing home attendant, and a dishonest accountant. We hear these stories first hand from each man and not until the final section do we learn how the three are interconnected and it will take you by surprise. The writing is beautifully crafted and spellbinding.

Interconnected stories of three men in modern Ireland. The first starts in the Middle East, and they all seem unrelated at the outset, but the author skillfully connects all the stories by the end. The writing is beautiful and compelling and every story is very engaging. My only concern/complaint is that the transitions between stories are so jarring and (in the electronic file I read) not clearly labeled, so that it takes a few paragraphs to understand that the focus has changed. Having said that, however, each story is so different and so captivating it didn't take me long to get involved in each of the stories.

A skillful author, an engaging story, sympathetic & realistic characters with some humor thrown in -- the perfect combination of an excellent novel.

I really loved a previous book by Donal Ryan, The Spinning Heart, which I also read because it was on the Man Booker longlist, back in 2013. What I loved in that book, Ryan's ability to portray the inner lives of his characters, is present in this book as well, but where that novel felt like a cohesive story this never really came together for me. I struggled to understand what the author was trying to do. Why these characters? Why these stories?

In the Man Booker Prize universe, though, the first page of this book was astounding in the way it harkened almost directly to The Overstory by Richard Powers, about how trees communicate, etc. What a coincidence! And I think the author intended for it to lay the groundwork for the novel, something I was waiting for and didn't find.

I will still try another novel by this author. I do think he is trying to write Ireland in a different way, but I think he needed more space to accomplish it with these characters in this case.

I don't really know how to describe this one. There are four parts to this story that seem really disjointed but that end up wrapping together in ways you might not expect. There are a bunch of characters who are only described briefly but who are fully fleshed out. There are intimate portraits of personal pain and deep need. I really liked the book, but I was also a little put off by the writing style. I generally really like Donal Ryan's writing, but the distance it created didn't help the construction of the story this time. It did stop me from realizing all of the ways these characters were connected until the very end of the book, but, even so, the distance bothered me a little bit this time.

FROM A LOW AND QUIET SEA is written by award-winning and Man Booker nominated Donal Ryan, and while I found the first section to be enthralling, I did not care for subsequent parts. Donal has crafted three stories which tell about the lives of Farouk, Lampy and John. Farouk is a doctor seeking to avoid the violence in his own country and he therefore arranges with a smuggler to leave Syria by boat with his wife and young daughter. That section is very emotional and well done. Lampy is a young Irish lad who is convincingly portrayed, but for whom I felt little empathy, especially given the rude language which he and his grandfather routinely employ. And the third centers on John who, frankly, was rather non-descript despite his guilty conscience. Their lives eventually intertwine in the final part of the book, if readers are willing to stay committed. For me, Kirkus summarized FROM A LOW AND QUIET SEA well: "this is a novel that is long on character development but lacking a center."

This was very good, but I'm afraid I didn't quite "get" it. It's beautifully written, the individual character portraits are wonderful, and it was a lovely read. I'm just not sure I understood all that Ryan was trying to say or do with it beyond the obvious interconnectivity of individuals. This may be "user error," however, and I would not want to dissuade anyone from reading it. It's a very impactful, albeit short, novel, and a worthwhile read.