A thing of such beauty and compassion, a reminder of what the very finest sentences can do to shatter and then reassemble our hearts

Beautiful and affecting

I struggle to think of a writer who has been so prolific and consistent in quality as Ryan . . . Brutally honest, moving and often hilarious

An engrossing, unpredictable, beautifully crafted novel; Donal Ryan is giving us characters - their angles and their language - that we haven’t seen in Irish literature before.

Donal Ryan has not only bounded over a wall into new territory, but built himself a castle there . . . This is a superb novel.

From a Low and Quiet Sea is not only very cleverly constructed, but deeply moving too. I loved it.

Donal Ryan writes characters so well that as a reader you think ‘I’ve met that man’, or ‘I know that woman.’ But as a writer you simply wonder ‘how does he do it?’ From a Low and Quiet Sea is brutal and beautiful, carefully crafted portraits, deep and real, tied together, fashioned by a true artist. I absolutely loved it.

Themes of kindness and humanity are the binding thread…and Ryan writes of them with characteristic warmth and insight.

The book has stayed with me

It’s a beautiful, luminous kind of piece - full of mystery, compassion, woven with such skill; heartbreaking and restorative. I will carry these splintered men around with me for a long time, along with the women who have loved them.

From a Low and Quiet Sea is beautifully written, compassionate and almost unbearably moving. I loved it. I would struggle to think of any other Irish author working today who writes with as much compassion as Donal Ryan.

Donal Ryan writes with such sharp observation and humanity, that he makes us sit up and wonder at the tiny quiet internal lives of strangers. His writing is a wonderful gift to all of us. From a Low and Quiet Sea is another short and perfect novel to be inhaled in one heart-lurching gulp.

Ryan is not the first Irish writer indebted to Joyce, but his work reminds me of something Sylvia Beach said about Joyce: “He told me that he had never met a bore.”…Wonderful

Deft and devastating…this book is both hard-hitting and uplifting: it serves as an indictment of the care industry, but also as a tribute to the way that humans care for one another.

The denouement, which comes in breathless bursts, is devastating. From a Low and Quiet Sea leaves you with that sense of discombobulating enlightenment that so often characterises the quiet epiphanies of great short stories.

A masterly portrait . . . the confidence with which Ryan dons the clothing of another culture marks a departure for his writing . . . a successor to John McGahern . . . It is exciting to see his subject matter move beyond his country’s borders, with the prospect of more of this to come.’

Haunting ... utterly persuasive

The lives and stories, loves and tragedies, animating From a Low and Quiet Sea are wonderfully individual and finely alive. This is a brief book: yet one that lingers long in the reader’s mind.

As moving as anything written about Syria

It is vomit-inducing, it’s so good.

Bewitching…unforgettable...It takes a good writer to frame right and wrong within a coherent narrative and make it not feel like a finger-wagging sermon. It takes a great one, however, to make the contents heave and sigh before your eyes.’

Empathy shines through the work

Ryan has the ability to shatter your heart into a million pieces with every book he writes - and even have you welcome the pain.

An example of masterful storytelling

With each novel Ryan gets better, and this moving and quietly insistent work is his best yet.

You can sense his compassion in the bones of his work

Devastating and masterful

A hugely affecting, moving read. I was heartbroken by the end, but adored every chapter

Beautiful

Each section displays Ryan’s range as a writer... [he] writes with brilliant empathy.

Exquisitely rendered, with raw anguish sublimated into lyrical prose.

Heartbreaking … Arguably the best of the new wave of Irish writers to have emerged over the last decade

Ryan has the gift of ventriloquism - he inhabits his fictional creations thoroughly, enveloping you in their worlds

Sublime

From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan made me laugh and cry and forced me to look strangers in the eye

Beautifully bleak and characterised by his remarkable ability to write about grief and common humanities.

Beautiful, compassionate

Superlatives wouldn’t do for describing From a Low and Quiet Sea … understated, and gloriously heart rendering

Strout turns her clear, incisive gaze on the intricacies and betrayals of small town life

Anything is Possible is predictably great because it's written by Elizabeth Strout, and brilliantly unpredictable - because it is written by Elizabeth Strout