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School Days
School Days
Jul 11, 2025 12:52 AM

Author:Jack Sheffield

School Days

The year is 1976 and Jack Sheffield never wants to leave his job.

Jack has been the deputy head teacher at Newbridge Primary School for six years now, and he's happy exactly where he is - even if it sometimes feels like there are a few things missing from his life. After all, the kids keep him busy and there's always a game of rugby to play.

But it's a time of change, and Jack's world is no exception. New and old faces appear in his life and a romance blossoms, bringing with it a buried secret and hidden threat. Soon, Jack must make a decision as to where his future is heading, and prepare to face whatever change is yet to come . . .

A classic Jack Sheffield tale, ready to transport you back to a simpler time.

_____________________

Praise for Jack Sheffield:

'Wry observation and heartwarming humour in equal measure.' Alan Titchmarsh

'Overflowing with amusing anecdotes.' Daily Express

'Amusing adventures at the North Yorkshire village school.' Choice

'Jack Sheffield's in a class of his own.' York Press

Reviews

With his customary warmth and good humour Jack tells of the many challenges that faced this idealistic young teacher

—— Choice magazine

This book makes for a perfect escape to a simpler time

—— Living North

Rereading this book has given me the gift of seeing it not only as an ode to violence, as it has come to be characterized, but also as a compassionate work by its end. I am indeed in love with this book.

—— Shani Mootoo

Luminous and harrowing

—— Times Literary Supplement

[Pynchon] writes richer comedy than most card-carrying comic novelists, filling his eight novels with hilarious spoofs, outlandish characters, screwball dialogue and zany scenarios

—— Guardian

Screwballs chase alligators in sewers in a chaotic and worlwide chase for V., while literary styles, brilliant and bizarre, chase each other

—— Books and Bookmen

The book sails with majesty through caverns measureless to man. Few books haunt the waking or sleeping mind, but this is one

—— Time

Mr Pynchon writes with enormous skill and virtuosity

—— Times Literary Supplement.

I was thunderstruck by this exquisitely beautiful and powerful novel. This is writing of shimmering truthfulness, empathy and authority by the most consistently brilliant Irish writer of his generation.

—— JOSEPH O'CONNOR

The Queen of Dirt Island is the work of a master writer in full flow. Donal Ryan is uncommonly perceptive at finding greatness in humanity's goodness. This is his best novel yet.

—— RÓNÁN HESSION

Donal Ryan makes writing look effortless. He manages to capture the world and all its broken beauty in one tiny corner of Ireland. His characters feel like people you've always known. His words seem to sing off the page.

—— JAN CARSON

Simply sumptuous...This soaring tale of four generations of women in a small Irish town is bursting with humour and pathos. The Queen of Dirt Island contains shocking twists, deaths, reflections on how fiction misappropriates lives and a sharp portrait of how love can lift and twist the human heart....glorious.

—— INDEPENDENT

Beautiful, absorbing

—— SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

In gorgeous, graceful prose, Donal Ryan tells the story of four generations of women in this tender, joyful gem of a novel.

—— PAULA HAWKINS

An endlessly surprising story of the heart's secret places, and what we hide there... This magnificent novel confirms Donal Ryan is a writer of rare and precious vision: he sees the world as it ought to be, and dares you to believe in it.

—— MICHAEL HUGHES

A stunning portrayal of intergenerational family love and the complications of the human condition. I was swept up in the world of the Aylward women: in their power and pain and mostly, in their fierce resilience. A novel full of compassion and honesty, where love triumphs. The prose is pitch perfect.

—— ELAINE FEENEY

Hymn to the warp and woof of life; celebration of the flip-flop way of family; soaring testimony to the endurance of the human spirit. And all delivered with his trademark compassion, empathy, humour and brio. A gift of a book.

—— ALAN McMONAGLE

A compelling read

—— SAINSBURY'S MAGAZINE

Big-hearted, generous and brimful of emotion, this is a gorgeous, life-enhancing novel.

—— Mail on Sunday

Ryan's writing is like poetry and he has a real gift for creating characters who live in full technicolour. Highly recommend

—— Good Housekeeping

In Ryan's hands the mundane and the everyday is transformed into a thing of beauty, thrumming with significance.

—— REFINERY 29

Tender with comic observation ... a topsy-turvy emotional rollercoaster

—— DAILY MAIL

Magical

—— OBSERVER

Exquisitely rendered. It reads like musical sounds, full of light and lilting melody...it's funny and sad, and sparks with the most tremendous, tart, wit.

—— INews

The characters are compelling and vividly drawn, the dialogue is profane and frequently hilarious; the prose drips like honey off a spoon.

—— SUNDAY TIMES

A jewel of a novel that will surely become a classic... enthralling and unmissable

—— DAILY EXPRESS, 'Fiction Highlights of 2022'

A celebration of love and loyalty among women.

—— IRISH INDEPENDENT

Big-hearted, generous and brimful of emotion, this a gorgeous, life-enhancing read

—— IRISH MAIL ON SUNDAY

It is a beaut. It's a celebration of women and of womanhood. I see my mother in this, I see my sister ... This book is a joy.

—— RYAN TUBRIDY

If language - lyric, lovely and funny, steeped in County Tipperary - and women (men come and go, rarely center a chapter and are often useless, sometimes cruel) are of no interest to you, The Queen of Dirt Island is not your next read. Ryan's book is a celebration, in an embroidered, unrestrained, joyful, aphoristic and sometimes profane style, of both ... The Queen of Dirt Island gives the women their due, and the reader is rewarded.

—— NEW YORK TIMES

Donal Ryan's The Queen of Dirt Island is a little Irish miracle ... there's as much implicit wisdom in these pages about how to live as how to write ... Ryan has his own emotional range and a way of capturing the largeness of what look like tiny lives but aren't

—— WASHINGTON POST

Ambitious, unsettling and funny, this book is full of desire and mischief with surprising results.

—— Platinum, *Summer Reads of 2022*
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