''He heard Daddy one time saying he was a grand quiet boy to Mother when he thought Johnsey couldn''t hear them talking. Mother must have been giving out about him being a gom and Daddy was defending him. He heard the fondness in Daddy''s voice. But you''d have fondness for an auld eejit of a crossbred pup that should have been drowned at birth.''
While the Celtic Tiger rages, and greed becomes the norm, Johnsey Cunliffe desperately tries to hold on to the familiar, even as he loses those who all his life have protected him from a harsh world. Village bullies and scheming land-grabbers stand in his way, no matter where he turns.
Set over the course of one year of Johnsey''s life, The Thing About December breathes with his grief, bewilderment, humour and agonizing self-doubt. This is a heart-twisting tale of a lonely man struggling to make sense of a world moving faster than he is.
Donal Ryan''s award-winning debut, The Spinning Heart, garnered unprecedented acclaim, and The Thing About December confirms his status as one of the best writers of his generation.
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Donal Ryan (Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, 1976) es una de las voces más originales de la narrativa irlandesa del siglo XXI. Debutó en 2012 con la novela Corazón giratorio (Sajalín, 2019), publicada en más de quince países y galardonada, entre otros, con el premio Guardian al mejor debut y el premio literario de la Unión Europea. Nominado en dos ocasiones al premio Booker y ganador del premio Jean Monnet de literatura europea, Ryan es autor de siete novelas y un libro de relatos. En 2014 abandonó su trabajo como funcionario para dedicarse por completo a la literatura y a dar clases de escritura creativa en la Universidad de Limerick.