The Thing About December

by Donal Ryan

‘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.

Genres: Fiction, Ireland, Irish Literature, Literary Fiction, Book Club, Contemporary, Novels

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 26, 2013

About the author

Donal Ryan is the author of the novels The Spinning Heart, The Thing About December, the short-story collection A Slanting of the Sun, and the forthcoming novel All We Shall Know. He holds a degree in Law from the University of Limerick, and worked for the National Employment Rights Authority before the success of his first two novels allowed him to pursue writing as a full-time career.

Reviews

[Laysee · Rating 4 out of 5]

How in the world do writers pen stories that are sad but also painfully beautiful? The Thing About December left my heart in shreds.

Set in rural Ireland, 2001, during the economic boom years of the Celtic Tiger era, this bittersweet story follows 24-year-old Johnsey Cunliffe, an intensely lonely, naïve, socially inapt, and simple-minded young man, over a calendar year. The chapters follow chronologically the months of the year. Each typically begins with Johnsey’s description of what the month has to offer, his experiences mingled with memories of younger days spent with his deceased father and more recently, with his emotionally absent mother. It opens optimistically enough: ‘… January is a lovely month. Everything starts over again in the New Year… It makes the world fresh.’ Ryan writes so masterfully that by February the reader writhes in dread of Johnsey’s uncertain future.

In Johnsey, Ryan created an incredulously innocent young man we wish to defend. He was described as one of the biggest boys, ’clumsiest and mumbliest’, and regarded as 'spastic'. He is all too aware of himself as a social misfit and calls himself ‘a fat eejit’ who is ‘a bit of a gom.’ Johnsey is offered a goodwill, dead-end job at a co-op under a boss who resents him for his uselessness. Every day after work he is waylaid and tormented by a childhood bully (Eugene Penrose) and village thugs. He is completely friendless, helpless, with not the foggiest clue of how to save himself. On the domestic front, it is clear he has almost no self-care skills.

An encounter with the thugs ironically leads to Johnsey making his first ever friends. Even so, it is heartbreaking how tongue-tied and lost he is in navigating these relationships. New zoning laws also spell financial promises for Johnsey who inherited his father’s farmland but with it also comes new challenges. In Ryan’s oft repeated words, ‘it’s a fright to God’ how Johnsey will live out his days. What dulled the edge of sadness was Johnsey’s self-deprecating humor and his incongruent awareness of how laughable his encounters must appear to outsiders who do not share his awkwardness.

Irish readers will feel right at home with Ryan’s use of dialogue and local slang. It took me a while to figure out what it means to ‘talk bollocks’, ‘be thick’ with someone, to be ‘a jealous yoke’ or to ‘act the bollix’.

The themes of isolation, loneliness, and self-doubt were explored with admirable sensitivity and empathy. I waited until December to read The Thing About December. These themes, however, are universal and timeless. Great book.

[Anne-Marie Scully · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who grew up in rural Ireland, Donal Ryan's writing resonates hugely with me but its not just because I can identify with the day to day life and the colloquialisms of the rural communities he sets his stories in that makes me love his writing. Rather its because of his ability, through his writing, to reveal humanity for all that it is, good and bad. Every word and every sentence he writes reveals something important about human nature. The wonderfully ironic thing about The Thing About December is that the author chose a character who can't really communicate or connect with other people, to communicate a powerful story to us the readers.

Johnsey Cunliffe, the main character in The Thing About December, is a young man who has been lonely and on the margins of society his whole life, even when he had people around him who appeared to care for him and accept him. When we meet him, those people who did care for him, although never really understood him, are now also gone from his life and his loneliness is intensified. The book documents his heartbreaking journey through the first year of his life where he is truly alone in the world.

Although there is lots of humour in the book and plenty of unforgettable lines from Johnsey's internal monologues this book is heartbreakingly sad and very very true to life.

A wonderful read that I will come back to again and again. Congratulations to the author on yet another masterpiece.

[Angela M · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written book but full of sadness and grief, bullying and sometimes violence. I found it difficult to read at times but yet I just had to stay there with Johnsey. He's an innocent and naive man who has lost both parents and is trying to manage on his own but has never had to. The outside world seems to move in and prey on him.

Johnsey will steal your heart and then his story will break it as you follow his narrative month by month during the year he is first alone. He remembers times from his childhood and it's apparent that he had never really fit in.

It's sometimes hard to know if he is really mentally deficient or just an innocent soul. Although it was difficult at times to follow the Irish vernacular, I got used to it. This is a moving story that will give you pause about how people treat each other.

********************************************************************
Thanks to Steerforth Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

[Gearóid · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book was just great!
I did'nt know anything about the story or what to expect before i started reading it but it was a real treat.

The story of Johnsey is really a tragic tale of loneliness,greed and bullying/manipulation but most of all about his terrible loneliness.

But there is an amazing humour in the telling of this tale.At times it was just absolutely hilarious and i had to put the book down as i couldnt read the page my arms were shaking so much from the laughter!

The characters were all wonderful and their way of talking to each other(the banter) was just so funny it kept catching me by surprise and i would be away laughing again even when the poor guy was in hospital in a terrible state!

Where else would you get a book with a character called Mumbly Dave!

Behind all the humour and lovely interaction between the characters at times it is still behind it all a very tragic tale that will move people.

I hope other people will enjoy this book as much as i did.It may take a while to get into the local dialect but once you get that you wont look back and eventhough you will really feel for Johnsey you will also definitely laugh out loud at times!

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Donal Ryan has become an author I plan to watch. He has a unique and powerful voice. In this, his second book, he tells the story of one year in the life of Johnsey Cunliffe. The novel is broken into sections by month, loosely organized by those tasks Johnsey recalls his father performing on the family farm when he was small. But now his father has died and his world has changed and Johnsey, a young man who lacks social graces and is considered somewhat simple by locals, is trying to figure out what his life is to become.

There are givers and takers in his world. It's the time of things actually going well for Ireland but that doesn't always mean well for everyone.Johnsey is caught in the wheelings and dealings and his simplicity is not a help.

As in The Spinning Heart, Ryan uses some lyrical prose in his decriptions of the land and also provides wonderful portraits of various characters who surround Johnsey.


The morning sun was fairly beaming down and all the
trees were heavy with green and there was a haze of
flies and bugs and butterflies about the land and all
he could do was think about how some lives are full to
bursting with people and work and sport and children
and fun and his own was all empty spaces where those
things ought rightly to be, were he the kind of man
that could close his fist around opportunity and keep a
tight howlt of it rather than shrinking from it and hiding
inside his parents' house nearly too scared to even
peep out for fear of failure and ridicule. (loc 1409)


This selection reveals a few things---a near stream of consciousness approach and the use of Irish vernacular which wash through the book and which I allowed to flow over me. Something not present here is the often earthy tone of Johnsey's thoughts and speech. While I would assume it is a fairly normal pattern for the young Irish male character Ryan has created, at times it seemed a bit excessive. But I can't allow that to interfere with my overall praise of this novel though some readers might be put off.

This is, ultimately, a very powerful novel and, while I like The Spinning Heart fractionally better, I rate this one at 4 to 4.5*


Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an ecopy of this book for review.

[Kwoomac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. I could not put this book down. I was racing to get to the end of the story, in spite of knowing it wasn't going to end happily-ever-after. It follows a year in the life of 24 year old man/boy, Johnsy, in Tipperary during the times of the Celtic Tiger. Johnsy is somewhat limited and has been overprotected by his parents. Away from his family's protection, Johnsy is regularly tormented by a gang of his peers, who are on the dole, and spend their days drinking and looking for trouble.

I first discovered this author when I read The Spinning Heart. This story has a similar feel to it. I descibed that book as melancholy, the same could descibe this as well. Instead of a "feel good" story, this is a "feel bad" one. And yet, I couldn't stop reading, in spite of how it made me feel.

Ryan has a talent for evoking such raw emotion from his characters. The arguments, the misunderstandings, the awkwardness of new relationships, all relayed in beautiful, often bleak prose.

Here's Johnsy: If you were feeling especially lonesome, and just sitiing in the kitchen, say, and you let it out through the gate because you weren't concentrating properly on keeping a rein on it, your mind could have a fine old wander about for itself.

I just want to copy whole sections I was moved by but I'll restrain myself. Let me just say that Ryan's characters are so painfully real, you can feel what they are feeling. You will live the year along with Johnsy. And you'll feel like you're on a fast train that is out of control. And then you will crash.

What more can you ask for in a book?

[Jodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another gorgeous book from the Irish master (IMO), Donal Ryan. This was my final to read until Heart, Be at Peace comes out in May.

Apologies to my friends and followers:
Thanks to the Orange Maniacal Menace, world-wide insanity grows worse by the day, making me fearful, furious, and depressed. I find I am unable to write a proper review. It's possible, though unthinkable, that the madness may continue for four years! Until things settle, please join me in hoping and/or praying that goodness, decency, and democracy prevail!☮️🌐💟

[iva° · Rating 5 out of 5]

sjajno ispričana priča o životu u irskoj zabiti kroz prizmu mladog i ne baš intelektualno jakog johnseya cunliffea.

donal ryan kroz 12 poglavlja (svako nosi naslov po jednom od godišnjih mjeseci, počevši sa siječnjom) provukao je sve što je potrebno da bi se suživio s johnseyem i da bi prikazao, sasvim realistično, likove (lokalni nasilnici, trač babe, paraziti, gramzivci...) i događaje koji se zbivaju među njima, a johnsey cunliffe, kao dvadesetineštogodišnji mladić na rubu retardacije, iz svoje perspektive daje jedini ispravni pogled na to društvo koje nije ni po čemu drugačije od ostalih zadrtih društava po svim svjetskim zabitima.
donal ryan ide mi na listu "pročitati sve od ovog čovjeka".

[Kirstine · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Thank you, Netgalley, for the opportunity to review another one of Donal Ryan's books!)

“How big is a feeling? Not even as big as one of them atoms that the science teacher used to be on about. It’s nothing and everything at the same time.”

At first I thought our narrator, Johnsey, was a young child, his speech and thoughts seemed so childish and simple. Then I thought he was mentally challenged. Then I realized he might just be slower to understand than most other people. Stupid, you could say. And I pitied him. I pitied him his loneliness, and his simplistic worldview.

I pitied him because his father died and then his mother killed herself, leaving him lonelier than before. I felt deep sadness for him, too, because his parents clearly loved him, but still they left him, alone and sad and frightened, to mourn them both.

“This couldn’t be kept up, though, this way he had of seeing only blackness lately.”

Split into 12 parts, starting with January ending with December, this is the story of Johnsey Cunliffe. Johnsey hasn’t lived the best life you can imagine, and not the worst either, at least not until both his parents die. Growing up he was shielded by his parents from the realities and cruelties of the world, sure he was bullied, but his parents never urged him to fight back, they never taught him how to survive in a world constantly out to get him, for being fat, for being stupid, for being different.

In these 12 months he experiences life on his own for the first time, he learns all those things he should have understood a long time ago. He experiences grief, depression, humiliation, pain, but he also forms an unlikely friendship, learns happiness again and loves for the very first time.

“It’s easy have things happen to you. All you have to do is exist. Making things happen back is the hard thing.”

All his life, things have happened to Johnsey and now, suddenly, he has to make things happen back, without his parents or a soul in the world to guide him. He has to face society on his own, and traverse the delicate social waters of a tight-knit rural community. It results in a constant miscommunication between him and everyone else, and it breeds a prejudice and judgment that slowly grows into something large and ugly. Something that could have been averted, but slowly becomes inevitable, simply because humans are too good at judging based on assumed knowledge. We’re satisfied once we’ve found a scapegoat we can pin our frustrations and worries on. And if he never learned how to fight back? All the better.

I might have pitied Johnsey to begin with, and I might have pitied him in the end, but not for the same reasons, and the one I pity most is myself, for judging him before I knew him. For reading a sentence and thinking I understood the man. Johnsey’s narration is deceptively simplistic, as I got further into the book I realized I had gravely misjudged him. He is quite eloquent in his descriptions, and given enough time he’s often accurate in his understanding of and observations about people and situations. He’s not as stupid as he’s lead us to believe, adding to the sadness we feel for him. He is a product of, yes, a simple mind, but also overprotecting parents. Given different circumstances he might have led a near normal life, but some damage cannot be undone.

Donal Ryan is a great writer, and both this and The Spinning Heart are testaments to his incredible talent. He tells tales that touch you profoundly, and that speak volumes about human vulnerability and desperation in a society that’s collapsing, while keeping his writing simple and insightful.

He’s worth keeping an eye on.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 A rather short little book that contains much. Johnny has lost both his parents in a short period of time.He is ill equipped to handle life on his own, and he spends much time pondering this defect. He tries so hard to hang on to the past, remembering times with his dad. He is bullied relentlessly, and though he receives some kindness, he is mostly now alone. People try to toke advantage of his slowness by trying to trick him out of his land.

Set in Ireland during the time of the Celtic Tiger this is a very well written and gritty novel. Much of it is grim, but it is hard not to take to and feel sorry for Johnnie. In many ways he is such an innocent. The book chapters AR months, the months since he was left alone. This is his story and though in his internal dialogue he often laments that he understands so little, in fact I think he has the measure of some of the undesirable characters found in the story.

A novel about changing times and the effort of on young man who has a very hard time keeping up with the changes.

ARC from NetGalley.

[Elena · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Metalno srce” mi je bila super knjiga, a “S prosincem” još i bolja. Donal Ryan je stvarno majstor likova i moram pod hitno nabaviti još njegovih knjiga!

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a hard one for me to get into, review, and rate. It was unrelentingly grim. I like my depressing Irish books, but I usually like them with a bit more black humor (like Claire Kilroy's The Devil I Know). The number of bad things that happened to Johnsey made the book almost unbelievable for me. On the other hand, although it took me awhile to get into the dialect (probably not a problem for Irish readers), I found Donal Ryan's prose gorgeous and there were several extremely poignant quotations about the nature of the human conditions. Passages like the one below took my breath away.

"Loneliness covers the earth like a blanket. It flows in the stream down through the Callows to the lake. It's in the muck in the yard and the briars in the haggard and the empty outbuildings are bursting with it. It runs down the walls inside of the house like tears and grows on the walls outside like a poisonous choking weed. It's in the sky and the stones and the clouds and the grass. The air is thick with it: you breath it into your lungs and you feel like it might suffocate you. It runs into hollow places like rainwater. It settles on the grass and on trees and takes their shapes and all the earth is wet with it. It has a smell, like the inside of a saucepan: scrapped metal, cold and sharp. When it hits you, it feels like a rap of a hurl across your knuckles on a frosty winter's morning. in PE: sharp, shocking pain, but inside you, so it can't be seen and no one says sorry for causing it nor asks are you ok, and no kind teacher wants to look at it and tut-tut and tell you you'll be grand, good lad. But you know if another man stood where you're standing and looked at the same things he wouldn't see it or feel it."

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in the same village as in Ryan’s highly acclaimed previous novel The Spinning Heart, The Thing in December uses a more traditional third-person linear narrative to tell the story of Johnsey Cunliffe, in 12 chapters that cover one year of his life. Johnsey is not quite as other people and finds it hard to find his place in the world, especially the world of a small Irish community. Regularly bullied, without friends, struggling to make sense of the world around him, he is particularly vulnerable when his parents die and he is left completely alone.
The novel is during the days of the Celtic Tiger and the boom in property prices. Johnsey owns land, land that has now become extremely valuable and it seems that everyone around him wants to take advantage of his innocence and force him to sell the land that he so dearly wants to hold on to, for it is all that he has left of the happier times when he was safe at home with his loving parents. He simply doesn’t understand why he should be willing to give it up. Some of the locals seem eager to help him, and even appear to befriend him, but Ryan skilfully conveys a feeling of mounting dread as the reader begins to understand what is going on behind the scenes as the pressure is put on Johnsey to sell.
This is a heartrending and moving story. The descriptions of Johnsey’s loneliness and bewilderment, those of a young man ill-equipped to survive without guidance and vulnerable to the avariciousness and greed that surround him, the book is a fable of how the innocent suffer when the profit motive is given free reign.
This is an unsettling and deeply moving book, beautifully written and expertly plotted, and one that deserves a wide readership.
My thanks to Netgalley for sending it to me.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whereas Ryan’s The Spinning Heart has 21 narrators’ voices, The Thing About December has just one – that of Johnsey Cunliffe, a simple young man who lost his father to cancer last year and now, after his mother’s sudden death, has to decide what to do with his parents’ property. Even after the shock of bereavement fades, he endures daily depression and isolation, as well as a brutal beating. “Sadness plus sadness equals more sadness. Sadness begets sadness...Loneliness covers the earth like a blanket.”

There is a slightly run-on, stream-of-consciousness element here, similar to what you’d find in the works of other Irish writers like Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín, or even James Joyce. The thick Irish dialect and slang may take a while to get used to, but with a little persistence it soon becomes natural. After all, novelist Sebastian Barry insists in his review for the Guardian, “it is exciting to be closed out for a moment from your own language.”

Recommended for fans of The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer.

[Elaine Mullane || Elaine and the Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

"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."

Donal Ryan is a master at capturing the heart of Irish life. While his book The Spinning Heart focused on the lives of 21 people who were affected by Ireland's property crash, The Thing About December is set before the bubble burst and focuses on a community that tears itself apart from greed when the value of land is inflated. The novel is split into 12 chapters, each one detailing a month in the life of the above-mentioned Johnsey (Conliffe), a lonely, harmless and inexperienced young man, living without ambition in a rural Irish setting. He is depicted as damaged and isolated, favouring a night at home with his mother than one in unfamiliar territory trying to navigate the drama that is teenage life. He is often taunted by local characters, and is a victim of his own memories, some traumatic: his father's death, bullying, sexual inadequacy. When February ends and his mother unexpectedly dies, Johnsey is left alone, forging his way in a new world that he seems ill-equipped to handle, without guidance and without love.

The locals, it seems, are suddenly eager to help him. There are offers of dinners and company. But soon we learn just how wealthy the orphaned boy has become and although Johnsey is oblivious to the ulterior motives of his new friends, we are not. They are after the land:

“Here’s auld Catholic Cunliffe with his big farm of land worth millions . . . and the whole fuckin parish on the dole”.

There are some despicable characters here, particularly Dave and Siobhán, who soon become permanent fixtures in our protagonist's life. Johnsey's desperate need for friendship dictates his willingness to allow these vultures to dominate him and we find ourselves urging Johnsey to defend himself. He is happy to settle for an unhappy life, but we want much more for him.

This book was released after The Spinning Heart but was actually written before it. In a way, they are perfect companion pieces, one looking at what helped to cause the crash and one dealing with the aftermath. Together they carry the message that we are all to blame when it comes to the crash; we each played our part. Ryan is an incredibly talented writer. He perfectly evokes the tensions that lie at the heart of rural life in Ireland while also remaining non-judgmental. He is never disapproving but yet retains the right to not bring anything to a happy conclusion. His work evokes emotion, is introspective and often unsettling, but it is never apologetic.

Ryan is a unique and brilliant Irish writer who is really forging a path for himself in contemporary literary fiction. I am currently reading Ryan's third offering, From a Low and Quiet Sea and am eager to see how he handles new subject matter. A review of that is coming soon.

[Allan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having enjoyed The Spinning Heart so much last year, I came to this, Ryan's second release, which was actually written before his first, with caution, in case I found that it wasn't up to the same standard. While it didn't quite reach the levels of its predecessor, it was still a very strong and thought provoking novel.

Set once more in a small, unnamed village in Tipperary, this time before the fall of the Celtic Tiger, it follows the fortunes of Johnsey Cunliffe. a 24 year old farmer's son with learning difficulties, whose life circumstances have already changed for the worse with the death of his well respected father to cancer the year before the narrative begins, and who is already victimised and mocked by local bullies, while others in the population turn a blind eye. While written in the third person, Ryan skilfully conveys Johnsey's thought process and simplified view of events around him as his life circumstances change again, and the majority of those around him put pressure on him to give in to a local consortium bent on redeveloping his land.

I was ultimately left with a terribly sad feeling after reading this book, which I suppose is credit to Ryan, who conveys such sympathy for his protagonist, without being in any way judgemental of his, or other characters' intentions. Johnsey's outlook isn't logical, but is often more morally sound than those around him. One is left wondering, even as a reader, about the intentions of those who stick with him, like Mumbling Dave and nurse, Siobhan (although less so the latter). And, of course, events come to a head at the end of the year-no spoilers but don't expect a happy ending...

A book that may not be as 'special' in my eyes as its predecessor / successor, but one that is extremely thought provoking and worthy in its own right. I look forward to Ryan's future work!

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where to begin with this book... this was a book club choice, something I would have never picked up of my own accord. I'm so glad I got the opportunity to step outside my comfort zone and enter the world of Johnsey Cunliffe.

In truth, Johnsey's world isn't that different from my own. I grew up in rural Ireland, I've grown up with people speaking the way the characters speak in this book. There were words here that I hadn't seen or heard since I was a child, so there was an air of nostalgia off it for me at times. That only added to my sadness at times.

The book is set over the course of a year in Johnsey's life, presumably his most difficult year. Each chapter is a different month, and we see Johnsey dealing with some horrific life events. His self esteem is on the floor, but as we learn about the type of person he is, we learn that he has more common sense and more cop on than a lot of the other people he encounters. He is endearing, sweet, and I was so full of hope for him when things seemed like they were going to look up a bit.

I'm not in the habit of spoiling books, so I don't want to say too much more, but sufficed to say I don't think I took a breath for the last 30 or so pages. Genuinely read it with my hand over my mouth.

One of my surprise favourites of the year.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am caught between giving this book 4 or 5 stars. This novel was published after The Spinning Heart but is Donal Ryan's first novel that was rejected. I think I appreciated more after reading The Spinning Heart. It tells the story of Johnsie Cunliffe, the resident of a small town in County Limerick (we assume). Johnsie is a man who once would have been labeled "mentally retarded" and now might be called developmentally disabled. His parents protected him growing up, but now they are both gone. This is a story about the tremendous loneliness of an individual with no friends. Some of the best passages in the book describe this loneliness. When a land boom comes to town, Johnsie is no longer friendless, but too naive to understand he is being used. This story also brings to mind those aging parents who have adult children with special needs, and worry what will become of them when they are no longer around.

[Stef Smulders · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rather simple story, nothing spectacular about it, but still an enjoying read. Johnsey’s naive and simple voice is sympathetic and gets to you. Don’t we all feel like him sometimes, let down by other people, fed up with the excuses and lies of others?

“All talk is lies in a way. Only the doing of a thing can make it true. All words are lies unless the thing spoke about can be set before a person and seen and touched.”

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 4 out of 5]

 
A Life in the Year

Mother always said January is a lovely month. Everything starts over again in the New Year. The visitors are all finished with and you won't see sight nor hear sound of them until next Christmas with the help of God. Before you know it you'll see a stretch in the evenings. [...] The bit of frost kills any lingering badness. That's the thing about January; it makes the world fresh.

Donal Ryan's short novel will follow the year, month by month in a small village in Tipperary. Though in the third person, it is told through the eyes of Johnsey Cunliffe, the twentyish son of a farming couple, a mother's boy, and not the sharpest knife in the box. His father has recently died and his mother follows soon after, leaving him the sole owner of the farm. The land is leased to tenant farmers, so he doesn't have that responsibility, but new zoning ordinances mean that the area can now be developed for commercial purposes, and he suddenly finds himself under pressure to sell. This for a man who can hardly hold down a menial job, does not own a phone, and can barely operate an ATM. But he has a wonderfully infectious voice, whether he is talking about memories of going to hurling matches with his father, his constant bullying at the hands of the local layabouts, or his dreams of sex:

Johnsey often thought about girls in his room. He had a dirty magazine that used to belong to Anthony Dwyer, who wasn't quite the gom Johnsey was, but who had the added hardship of being a meely-mawly with one leg shorter than the other. Looking at Dwyer's magazine often landed him in a sinful place and the thought of doing that made him feel like he sometimes did before walking up to Communion if the Moran girls were sitting near the front in their short skirts....

In April, he gets caught in a fight and lands in hospital. Which changes his life in two significant ways. He meets a lovely nurse named Siobhán who seems to care for him, and he makes friends with his room-mate, an irrepressibly garrulous man some ten years his senior known as Mumbly Dave. So the second half of the book is no longer about his loneliness, but about whether he can rise above his awkwardness enough to handle friendship, and even love. Which may be harder still.

I have to say, though, that the ending came as a big surprise to me. In retrospect, I see that the signs were all there before. But for all the novel's mingled tone of comedy, pathos, and romance, the qualities you might wish are not necessarily those that prevail.

That's the thing about December: it goes by you in a flash.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where to start ?
This is a very tough read, it was for me anyway. The story of Johnsey a young man who finds life incredibly difficult due to the loss of both his parents in a short space of time and because he is and has been bullied for a long time by the people in is village. It's also a story of immense loneliness and people who want to steel away his land.
There is humour here but I found this one overwhelmingly bleak.
Therefore 3 *
I strongly advise any reader to be in a good place before picking this one up but do give it a go because as ever the writing is beautiful.

[Kerri · Rating 4 out of 5]

You had me at "Depressing Irish book under 250 pages" x

[Patrycja Krotowska · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Taki właśnie jest grudzień" to w teorii całkiem niezła powieść - objętościowo nieprzesadzona, z przemyślaną konstrukcją (każdy rozdział = każdy kolejny miesiąc), oscylująca wokół jakże popularnego ostatnio motywu samotności, opowiadająca o życiu irlandzkiego młodego mężczyzny, który traci wiele, ale i wiele ma jeszcze do przeżycia.

Johnsey nie jest królem życia. Gnębiony przez napastliwych rówieśników, pozbawiony oparcia w postaci obecności rodziców, nie do końca radzący sobie z codziennością w ogóle, nieumiejący podjąć jakiejkolwiek decyzji, podatny na manipulacje, ten młody człowiek wydaje się znajdować w samym centrum ostrzału nie posiadając żadnego uzbrojenia. I można by Johnsey'owi współczuć, gdyby nie fakt, że trudno upatrywać źródeł tego nieuzbrojenia, bo Johnsey nie robi nic (N-I-C), by zmienić cokolwiek.

Donal Ryan napisał powieść, którą na półce mogłabym postawić obok "Małego życia" (gdybym się go nie pozbyła tuż po lekturze). Znowu mamy biednego bohatera, na którego spada cała masa nieszczęśliwych zdarzeń i którego otaczają źle-życzący mu ludzie. Choć pojawiają się też pozytywni bohaterowie, jak np. pielęgniarka, która podczas pobytu Johnsey'a w szpitalu ręcznie go zaspokaja, a on w odpowiedzi się w niej zakochuje (sarcasm alert).

Od samego początku bardzo trudno było mi się w tę powieść wgryźć. Gawędziarski poniekąd sposób narracji, zahaczający niekiedy o strumień świadomości, rozpraszał mnie równie mocno, jak samego bohatera, który w jednym zdaniu potrafił kilkukrotnie zmieniać kierunek refleksji. Rzecz dzieje się w Irlandii i chyba to stanowiło najjaśniejszy punkt tej powieści (plus kilka efektownych językowo opisów). Nie wiem, czy to znowu kwestia nie-chce-mi-się-czytać-o-nieszczęśliwych-mężczyznach, czy sam Johnsey okazał się wyjątkowo bierny i bezbarwny, ale zupełnie nie interesowały mnie jego losy i myśli, o współczuciu nie wspominając.

Książka cieszy się świetnymi ocenami na zagranicznych portalach. Nie zniechęcam zatem, bo ocena 3.93 na GR i mnóstwo bardzo pozytywnych opinii tamże też musi o czymś świadczyć, a nuż i Wy znajdziecie wśród sympatyków tej powieści.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Donal Ryan's first book "The Spinning Heart" was a multi-layered narrative set in rural Ireland. This book occupies similar territory, but is more personal, the story of a lonely man struggling to come to terms with a world he doesn't understand. An impressive, moving and accomplished book.

[Dragan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tužna i melankolična priča baš stvorena za ove blagdanske dane. Donal Rayan mi je definitivno najveće otkriće ove godine. Pisac kojeg ću još čitati.

[Bonnie Brody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Johnsey Cunliffe is the butt of many a joke and the victim of bullying in his small Irish village. He is socially introverted to the point that he doesn't know how to hold a conversation and, after the death of his parents, finds himself isolated and fearful. He spends a great deal of time thinking about suicide but worries that it is a mortal sin. Even walking home from his mundane job is a frightening experience for him as the bullies await him with verbal and physical abuse.

He has two elderly friends in the village, the Unthanks. They provide him with food and sustenance as they loved Johnsey's father very much and now worry about young Johnsey on his own. Johnsey worshiped his father and wishes that he was more like him. "Why couldn't I have been born with a full quota of manliness?"

Johnsey leases out the farm that his parents left to him. They left him money as well but he is incapable of managing it. I might have ventured a guess that he was simple-minded but the inner working of his mind contradict that assumption.

When the town wants to buy Johnsey's land for development, all hell breaks loose. Johnsey feels like his inheritance contains the lifeblood of his ancestors and they wouldn't have wanted him to sell it. He also feels a huge sense of embarrassment and humiliation at his inability to take care of himself and his land. "All he could do was think about how some lives are full to bursting with people and work and sport and children and fun and his own was all empty spaces where those things ought rightly to be."

Johnsey is portrayed as pathetic and put upon. Those that don't actively try to harm him, attempt to pull the wool over his eyes and rip him off. When he finally does make a friend and have a chance at romance, things get even wonkier. Poor Johnsey!

Donal Ryan is a wonderful writer. I have read several of his other books and each one was better than the next. This one suffers from suffering and the repetitive story of Johnsey's failures in all his endeavors. I wanted to see it move a bit more quickly. Otherwise, it is a gem.

[Wes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about greed and bullying of the principle character Johnesy , a man who lost, his parents during a traumatic year in his life, and how he has to fend for himself with his learning difficulties. He inherited his family farm and when the land is rezoned is worth millions, which brings out the dark side of his friends human nature until the dramatic end.

[Rachel Cooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

really liked it, have a newfound appreciation for donal ryan and his ability to write these characters that are so consistent. a few times during it i was thinking that if it was up to me i feel like i wouldn’t be able to let the story go the way it went but it was excellent

[Elena Johansen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only finished this because of its short length and my own stubbornness. This is not a book for me.

First, in the "others think it's great but I'm not the right reader" department, this is so heavily stuffed with Irish idiom and slang that there were stretches of the narrative that were absolutely incomprehensible to me. Like, I can look up words and phrases online to fill in a lot of gaps, but when Johnsey's internal monologue or someone speaking to him goes off on a tear and starts using endless idiom and it's all a long string of words that don't make sense in that order to me and it just keeps going and oh maybe I see something that makes sense for a second but then here's more slang and here's more idiom and at the bottom of the page the paragraph finishes but I'm not sure what just happened because it's all a rush and I don't know how it fits together. For a finish.

It's repetitive and exhausting. But I can see how it would flow for a reader who is far more familiar with the language. I can see the charm of the style, but only as an outsider who will never really "get" it.

On a much more widely damning note, Johnsey is one of the most boring and passive protagonists I've ever read. He doesn't do anything. Everything happens to him. His father died. Then his mother dies. Then he's beaten to a pulp by the local gang of bullies. Then he lies around in the hospital silently falling in love with his nurse, who for some reason gives him a hand job, thus securing his adoration forever. Then when he gets out, his hospital roommate starts swinging by, then the nurse. And all the while various townspeople are trying to get him to sell his land for development, and the newspaper is writing articles about him blockading progress by refusing to sell, but he's not refusing, he's just not doing anything. Then the weird, over-written and unsatisfying ending happens.

Everything happens to him. The only real active choice he makes for the bulk of the story is quitting his job when he's in the hospital and his boss comes to see him, but that's both out of left field and out of character. Johnsey just goes with the flow of everything because all his life he's been coddled/bullied/told he's too stupid to do things on his own. I understand that his history has built him to be that passive nobody, but that doesn't make him an interesting character to follow, and honestly I don't care for the constant conflation of mental disability, mental health issues, and violence. I don't think there was any ending, happy or sad, that would have made me like this story better, but I can say Johnsey with a gun followed by a cute one-liner restating the title definitely wasn't it, if such an ending could exist.

This ended up being just a slog of misery that I didn't enjoy at all.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Johnsey Cunliffe is a 24 year old socially inept loner who lives at home and is often thought of as a "retard" or "fat eejit". Still grieving for his father when his mother passes away, he's left alone on the family farm with no real idea of what to do or how to cope in the world, his only friends are an elderly couple from the town who knew his parents. Walking home from his job at the Co-op he's often shouted at and pushed around by Eugene Penrose who has bullied him since he was a boy. When Johnsey ends up in hospital he meets fellow patient Mumbly Dave and nurse Siobhan and he continues to see them once he is home.

There's a sense throughout the book that things aren't going to end well for Johnsey and I just wanted to be able to help him, parts of the story are quite upsetting although there are also funny moments. The story is told in the third person and each chapter is a month from a year in the main characters life, we also learn lots about his childhood and things that have happened to him before. It's set during the Celtic Tiger boom years in Ireland when there was rapid economic growth, certainly people's perceptions of Johnsey and the farm are affected because of this.

Donal Ryan's debut novel The Spinning Heart is one of my favourite books of the year so The Thing About December had a lot to live up to. It didn't let me down, the author is a wonderful writer who has managed to fit so much into two relatively short books and is now someone whose new novels I will eagerly await.

I received a copy of this from Netgalley in return for a review