Books: All We Shall Know by Donal Ryan
Convincing female characters are a treat in this poignant look at small-town Ireland
Bert Wright
Sunday September 11 2016, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
Treble triumph: Ryan has penned his third novel
FERGAL PHILLIPS
"Martin Toppy is the son of a famous traveller and the father of my unborn child. He's 17. I'm 33. I was his teacher." So begins the blistering opening paragraph of Donal Ryan's third novel All We Shall Know. Four paragraphs in, and Melody, the novel's plain-speaking protagonist, thickens the plot by telling her husband that she's pregnant by a man she met online. Poleaxed by the news, the husband promptly bursts into tears, threatens to kill her, and storms out.
As set-up scenarios go, this could hardly be bettered. Clearly, this is no ordinary marriage and only extraordinary circumstances could conspire to produce such a catastrophic outcome. The nature of these circumstances we will soon learn, but the reader is immediately alerted to the