7 must-read literature books like The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan

Cover of The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan

The Spinning Heart

By: Donal Ryan

4.27

Format: 637 pages, Hardcover

In the aftermath of Ireland's financial collapse, dangerous tensions surface in an Irish town. As v…

If you liked the literature plot in The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan , here is a list of 7 books like this:

Cover of That They May Face The Rising Sun by John McGahern

1. That They May Face The Rising Sun

By: John McGahern

3.77

Format: None pages, Paperback

Widely considered to be the finest Irish writer of fiction at work today, John McGahern gives us a … read more

Similar categories in John McGahern's That They May Face The Rising Sun book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • ireland
  • irish literature
Cover of The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan

2. The Spinning Heart

By: Donal Ryan

4.27

Format: 637 pages, Hardcover

In the aftermath of Ireland's financial collapse, dangerous tensions surface in an Irish town. As v… read more

Similar categories in Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • ireland
  • irish literature
Cover of Antarctica by Claire Keegan

3. Antarctica

By: Claire Keegan

3.86

Format: 224 pages, Paperback

Published to great critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, the iridescent stories in Claire… read more

Similar categories in Claire Keegan's Antarctica book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • ireland
  • irish literature
"That's the way it is in our house, everybody knowing things but pretending they don't."

-Claire Keegan, Antarctica

"I run the house now. The last man who said I was old enough got scalded. My mother always said there was nothing as bad as a burn. And she was right. It's turning out that I'm taking no nonsense from…"

-Claire Keegan, Antarctica

"Whatever you say, I'll manage. I will live out of a water barrel and check the skies. I will learn fifteen types of wind and know the weight of tomorrow's rain by the rustle in the sycamores. Make ne…"

-Claire Keegan, Antarctica

4. Foster

By: Claire Keegan

3.92

Format: 256 pages, Paperback

A small girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm in rural Ireland, without knowing when s… read more

Similar categories in Claire Keegan's Foster book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

Cover of Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

5. Small Things Like These

By: Claire Keegan

4.18

Format: 128 pages, Hardcover

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal me… read more

Similar categories in Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • ireland
  • irish literature
  • fiction
"Always, Christmas brought out the best and the worst in people."

-Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

"for people were bound, he knew, to reveal not only themselves, but what they knew, in conversation"

-Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

"And then the nights came on and the frosts took hold again, and blades of cold slid under doors and cut the knees off those who still knelt to say the rosary."

-Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

"When he reached the yard gate and found the padlock seized with frost, he felt the strain of being alive and wished he had stayed in bed, but he made himself carry on and crossed to a neighbour’s hou…"

-Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

Cover of Prophet Song by Paul    Lynch

6. Prophet Song

By: Paul Lynch

4.10

Format: 259 pages, Kindle Edition

A fearless portrait of a society on the brink as a mother faces a terrible choice, from an internat… read more

Similar categories in Paul Lynch's Prophet Song book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • ireland
  • irish literature
"people are entitled to some small moment of peace."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"the child absorbing the mother’s trauma and storing it in his body for later use,"

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"... time is at once addition and subtraction, time adds one day to the next and always takes away from what's left..."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"...knowing how it is so that all boys grow up and pull away from home to unmake the world in the guise of making it, nature decrees it so."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

Cover of Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry

7. Old God's Time

By: Sebastian Barry

3.85

Format: 261 pages, Hardcover

From the two-time Booker Prize finalist author, a dazzlingly written novel exploring love, memory, … read more

Similar categories in Sebastian Barry's Old God's Time book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • ireland
  • irish literature
"Per ell aquest era el sentit de la jubilació, de l'existència: estar-se immòbil, feliç i inútil"

-Sebastian Barry, Old God's Time

"Per ell aquest era el sentit de la jubilació, de l'existència: estar-de immòbil, feliç i inútil"

-Sebastian Barry, Old God's Time

"No one minds life as long as they are not trying to leave it. Nor death, as long as they are not dying."

-Sebastian Barry, Old God's Time

Cover of The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright

8. The Wren, the Wren

By: Anne Enright

3.55

Format: 278 pages, Hardcover

An incandescent novel about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of… read more

Similar categories in Anne Enright's The Wren, the Wren book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • ireland
  • irish literature
"It's not that I think about him constantly, he is my way of thinking. His mind is my compass, his eyes my only mirror."

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

"We don’t walk down the same street as the person walking beside us. All we can do is tell the other person what we see. We can point at things and try to name them. If we do this well, our friend can…"

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

"We don't walk down the same street as the person walking beside us. All we can do is tell the other person what we see. We can point at things and try to name them. If we do this well, our friend can…"

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

Cover of Water by John Boyne

9. Water

By: John Boyne

4.33

Format: 176 pages, Hardcover

The first thing Vanessa Carvin does when she arrives on the island is change her name. To the local… read more

Similar categories in John Boyne's Water book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • ireland
  • irish literature
Cover of Earth by John Boyne

10. Earth

By: John Boyne

4.34

Format: 168 pages, Kindle Edition

From million-copy-bestselling author John Boyne, an inescapably gritty story about one young man wh… read more

Similar categories in John Boyne's Earth book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • ireland
  • irish literature
Cover of Close to Home by Michael  Magee

11. Close to Home

By: Michael Magee

4.06

Format: 288 pages, Hardcover

While growing up in West Belfast, Sean does every­thing he's supposed to do. He works hard, he stud… read more

Similar categories in Michael Magee's Close to Home book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • ireland
  • irish literature
Cover of So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan

12. So Late in the Day

By: Claire Keegan

4.00

Format: 47 pages, Hardcover

After an uneventful Friday at the Dublin office, Cathal faces into the long weekend and takes the b… read more

Similar categories in Claire Keegan's So Late in the Day book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • ireland
  • irish literature
Cover of Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2) by Colm Tóibín

13. Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2)

By: Colm Tóibín

3.82

Format: 294 pages, Hardcover

From the beloved, critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly movi… read more

Similar categories in Colm Tóibín's Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2) book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • ireland
  • irish literature
  • fiction
Cover of The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

14. The Bee Sting

By: Paul Murray

3.96

Format: 656 pages, Hardcover

From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and … read more

Similar categories in Paul Murray's The Bee Sting book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • ireland
  • irish literature
"It is for love. You are doing this for love."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"We all have problems. But often instead of accepting the truth about ourselves, we cover it up. We try to make ourselves the way we think we’re expected to be."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe every era has an atrocity woven into its fabric. Maybe every society is complicit in terrible things and only afterwards gets around to pretending they didn’t know. When the kids ask, tell them…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe that’s how it will go – instead of one definitive cataclysm, a series of ‘anomalies’, each time lasting longer, with the stretches of what you call normal life becoming further and further apar…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

Cover of Wild Houses by Colin  Barrett

15. Wild Houses

By: Colin Barrett

3.78

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

A darkly funny and deeply moving debut novel about crimes of desperation, dreams abandoned, and sma… read more

Similar categories in Colin Barrett's Wild Houses book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • ireland
  • irish literature
"What you are in, Dev, is a holding pattern, only you're not holding out for anything."

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"All boys, all children, are capable of cruelty at the right juncture of opportunity and circumstance, but only a few become committed prodigies of sadism..."

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"In the dream, exactly as he had in real life, he sensed the slow, inexorable approach of the shapeless, prospectless days to come, days when there would be no need to get out of bed or brush his teet…"

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"He looked around the empty kitchen. A part of him wanted this of course. A part of him had always wanted this, to be alone, away from even the prospect of any demand upon him to talk, to interact, to…"

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

Cover of Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy

16. Soldier Sailor

By: Claire Kilroy

4.10

Format: 256 pages, ebook

Well, Sailor. Here we are once more, you and me in one another's arms. The Earth rotates beneath us… read more

Similar categories in Claire Kilroy's Soldier Sailor book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • ireland
  • irish literature
"I laughed and then we were doing that thing again, our thing: laughing into one another's eyes. All that time I had thought I was jollying you along when all that time you were jollying along me."

-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor

"I tell my husband about my childhood and he tells me about his but it isn't the same. We can never know each other as we were then. But I know you. I will see the child you were in the man you will b…"

-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor

"Hated cling film. Hated it more than I hated kinetic sand. Defeated by something that lacked a third dimension. While I'd been off tinkering on the cerebral plane, the smart money has been mastering …"

-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor

"I knelt down to pick up the hatchling to . . . . what? Give it back to its mother? Here is your dying chick? Just before I made contact with it, she dive-bombed me. The mother actually dive-bombed me…"

-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor

Cover of The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry

17. The Heart in Winter

By: Kevin Barry

4.02

Format: 256 pages, Hardcover

Award-winning writer Kevin Barry’s first novel set in America, a savagely funny and achingly romant… read more

Similar categories in Kevin Barry's The Heart in Winter book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • ireland
  • irish literature
  • fiction
"... the morning was starkly lit under a migraine - white and vast opening sky."

-Kevin Barry, The Heart in Winter

Cover of Kala by Colin Walsh

18. Kala

By: Colin Walsh

3.99

Format: 416 pages, Hardcover

A gripping literary page-turner from a rising Irish talent in which former friends, estranged for t… read more

Similar categories in Colin Walsh's Kala book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • ireland
  • irish literature
"Vapers are cunt wands,' Donna snaps."

-Colin Walsh, Kala

"I just want to switch myself off. Disconnect from everything."

-Colin Walsh, Kala

"So much of the night's vague. A film strip with half the frames missing."

-Colin Walsh, Kala

"Who drinks a decaf cappuccino? Be honest with yourself and get a cup of warm milk."

-Colin Walsh, Kala

Cover of Topographia Hibernica by Blindboy Boatclub

19. Topographia Hibernica

By: Blindboy Boatclub

4.33

Format: 173 pages, Kindle Edition

You don't fully appreciate how large a donkey's head is until it's beside you in a Fiat Punto. The … read more

Similar categories in Blindboy Boatclub's Topographia Hibernica book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • ireland
  • irish literature
  • fiction
Cover of Breakdown by Cathy Sweeney

20. Breakdown

By: Cathy Sweeney

3.81

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

One winter morning, in contemporary Dublin, a middle-class woman wakes up next to her husband in he… read more

Similar categories in Cathy Sweeney's Breakdown book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • ireland
  • irish literature
Cover of The Coast Road by Alan Murrin

21. The Coast Road

By: Alan Murrin

3.99

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

A poignant and heartbreaking debut novel set in the 1990s in a claustrophobic coast town. With divo… read more

Similar categories in Alan Murrin's The Coast Road book and Donal Ryan's The Spinning Heart

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • ireland
  • irish literature

20 Best fiction books like The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan

Transform Your Habits

That They May Face The Rising Sun

John McGahern

3.77

Transform Your Habits

The Spinning Heart

Donal Ryan

4.27

Transform Your Habits

Antarctica

Claire Keegan

3.86

Transform Your Habits

Small Things Like These

Claire Keegan

4.18

View all the books

21 Top fiction books like Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Transform Your Habits

I Who Have Never Known Men

Ros Schwartz , Jacqueline Harpman

4.22

Transform Your Habits

Trust

Hernan Diaz

3.83

Transform Your Habits

Small Things Like These

Claire Keegan

4.18

Transform Your Habits

Prophet Song

Paul Lynch

4.10

View all the books

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