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The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth
AN IRISH INDEPENDENT AND IRISH TIMES BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2025
'An original voice' Colm Tóibín
'Duncan brings a new way of seeing' Irish Times
'A deliberative and delicate reading experience, revelatory in the truest sense of that word' Guardian
During winter season in a secluded Alpine city, John Molloy, an Irish restorative sculptor, meets Bernadette, an enigmatic Italian sociologist. As John falls in love, a distressing moment from his youth rises into view, the disastrous fallout of which has reverberated unchecked through his life.
Years later, a letter from home arrives, asking him to pray for the speedy death of an ailing friend. Over a day-long odyssey through the ancient streets and churches of Bologna, John is forced to confront his present, his past and the bedrock of his psyche. A delicately crafted novel of two halves, a decade apart, The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth is a masterful excavation of human desires, inhibitions, and the patterns of habit to which we unwittingly fall prey.
'An original voice' Colm Tóibín
'Duncan brings a new way of seeing' Irish Times
'A deliberative and delicate reading experience, revelatory in the truest sense of that word' Guardian
During winter season in a secluded Alpine city, John Molloy, an Irish restorative sculptor, meets Bernadette, an enigmatic Italian sociologist. As John falls in love, a distressing moment from his youth rises into view, the disastrous fallout of which has reverberated unchecked through his life.
Years later, a letter from home arrives, asking him to pray for the speedy death of an ailing friend. Over a day-long odyssey through the ancient streets and churches of Bologna, John is forced to confront his present, his past and the bedrock of his psyche. A delicately crafted novel of two halves, a decade apart, The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth is a masterful excavation of human desires, inhibitions, and the patterns of habit to which we unwittingly fall prey.
- GenresFiction
224 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 30, 2025
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389 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
February 26, 2025
Required: a working knowledge of quarrying and Catholicism
February 13, 2025
Many thoughts. Had to google the word genuflect. Very good to read around the same time as watching the Brutalist. Made me want to be in an airport with a black coffee and a sunny ancient destination. A restorative sculptor finding that people are his tether to Earth, versus materials, and a person is his counterweight like the way two statues rest on each other. The line about never shunning a person who loves you. Memory and restoration and renewal. I liked this book a lot.
April 30, 2025
It took me a while to get into the narration but I ended up connecting with the book in a quiet and lovely way. I enjoyed it and the discussion my bookclub had about it immensely. While it is melancholic it left me feeling a fair bit comforted
July 23, 2025
Man stops carving and propping up rocks, loses part of himself in the process, then goes looking for it in the streets and churches and cafés of Bologna.
Geological by inclination (and at times in pace) we follow stonecutter John across decades and across Europe, drifting from one dusty scaffolding to another, restoring and repairing things that others have have set in stone, before abandoning it all to settle down (though in a decidedly unsettled way) in the town of Bologna, with a woman named Bernadette, like the girl of the Lourdes Marian apparition.
His mother, unhinged by prayer and prone to such apparitions herself, saw statues move, but unwisely a decade before it became fashionable, and pays a heavy tithe, sectioned by the church as her mind unravels.
John, doesn't fall far from the tree. He takes his father's quarrying and his mother's worshipping and a chisel into his hands and carves statues himself. When he's not making statues he's studying them. People made of rock, so lifelike the mind can see them move. People made of flesh, so inert and unyielding, or fixed and deified, they seem almost made of stone.
Bernadette, like John's mother, depends on prayer, but refuses to initiate John into its mysteries.
There's a lot of quiet Catholicism, with all it's Marian divine Mammy underpinnings, buried in the bedrock of this novel.
Very heavy on description, which is beautifully done, but not a lot happens (though there is a little monkey business towards the end). A quiet novel, if you will.
Then in the end credits you discover the editing hand of Colm Toibin was at work. Ah, you say, as the pieces fall into place. If it's not one thing it's your mother. How heavy was that hand? Does it matter?
SPOLIER
A priest takes John by the scruff of his neck and physically expels him from the church, trespasses most vocally unforgiven. A bit on the nose perhaps, but it was the only part of this VERY SERIOUS BOOK that made me laugh.
Geological by inclination (and at times in pace) we follow stonecutter John across decades and across Europe, drifting from one dusty scaffolding to another, restoring and repairing things that others have have set in stone, before abandoning it all to settle down (though in a decidedly unsettled way) in the town of Bologna, with a woman named Bernadette, like the girl of the Lourdes Marian apparition.
His mother, unhinged by prayer and prone to such apparitions herself, saw statues move, but unwisely a decade before it became fashionable, and pays a heavy tithe, sectioned by the church as her mind unravels.
John, doesn't fall far from the tree. He takes his father's quarrying and his mother's worshipping and a chisel into his hands and carves statues himself. When he's not making statues he's studying them. People made of rock, so lifelike the mind can see them move. People made of flesh, so inert and unyielding, or fixed and deified, they seem almost made of stone.
Bernadette, like John's mother, depends on prayer, but refuses to initiate John into its mysteries.
There's a lot of quiet Catholicism, with all it's Marian divine Mammy underpinnings, buried in the bedrock of this novel.
Very heavy on description, which is beautifully done, but not a lot happens (though there is a little monkey business towards the end). A quiet novel, if you will.
Then in the end credits you discover the editing hand of Colm Toibin was at work. Ah, you say, as the pieces fall into place. If it's not one thing it's your mother. How heavy was that hand? Does it matter?
SPOLIER
A priest takes John by the scruff of his neck and physically expels him from the church, trespasses most vocally unforgiven. A bit on the nose perhaps, but it was the only part of this VERY SERIOUS BOOK that made me laugh.
March 8, 2025
this was beautiful, prose that is incredibly focused even in the narrator's observing, detailed view; I loved how sculpture defined the narrator's world view. questions of stability, family, home, guilt and the strength to face it
March 9, 2025
a quiet, introspective read from the perspective of a restorative sculptor. reflective and contemplative in a way that leaves one both incredibly melancholic yet strangely hopeful. prose was gorgeous - really enjoyed this.
or; catholicism, stone & statues.
or; catholicism, stone & statues.
May 9, 2025
Painfully vivid
August 18, 2025
Very precise and very sincere, like truly absent of any sense of irony at all, to an extent that my instinct was to recoil but instead I was brave and persevered and what was chiselled out over the duration is classical in construction, semi-modern in style, genuinely swooningly romantic and tragic. Flipped to the acknowledgements part way through and saw Colm had not just blurbed or helped but edited the thing — which shows [complimentary]
April 5, 2025
John needed to get his act together a bit sooner, Bernadette was obviously down and he was being way too coy. Second half is lovely but also maybe I just liked it because I read it while I was in Bologna, so it had a very strong sense of place for me. Ultimately a bit too navel-gazey and didn’t develop the characters enough for me, Anna and Patricia felt like spectres of friends at best unfortunately. The last few pages with all the grand religious imagery were confusing, but certainly glad he managed to pray and work through his trauma.
October 8, 2025
This book wanders through your head while your head wanders through it. 5 stars, will read everything he's written as soon as I can get my hands on it.
March 11, 2025
liked this for so many reasons
its economical flash fiction quality, attentiveness to subtle shifts in emotion
appreciation for art and its embeddedness in the material world
agnosticism and spirituality coexisting and comingling
its romance and grief happens in the margins, much like how the full articulation of the sculptures the protagonist spends his life restoring elude him, much like how many things in life play out, yes
its economical flash fiction quality, attentiveness to subtle shifts in emotion
appreciation for art and its embeddedness in the material world
agnosticism and spirituality coexisting and comingling
its romance and grief happens in the margins, much like how the full articulation of the sculptures the protagonist spends his life restoring elude him, much like how many things in life play out, yes
June 13, 2025
Something in this writing reminds of a grotto, someplace safe and cool and spilling with light; a cave you can explore without fear. The passages circle and turn, and it's interesting to see how the life of the main character - let's call him John - is brought to the surface by women, while mostly mute men hang by in the shadows. There are captivating thoughts, often suggested and occasionally stated plainly, that feel inevitably new; new, in the way that approaching ruin and death entice novel considerations.
September 30, 2025
A love story between Austria and Italy based on detailed descriptions of rocks, clouds, landscapes, arms, lips. Adrian Duncan may be the most original of the current "Irish School" because of his scientific writing, which is based on carefully observing all the things we all see all the time, but never look at properly. He, on the other hand, looks at everything through a magnifying glass and gives a full account of what he sees.
I just hope this doesn't start attracting too many people to Bologna, a city where I lived and worked for some time. His ability to capture the details of this most beautiful city comes from his methodical descriptive technique, which seems to link him, perhaps tenuously, to the Oulipo movement. He captures Bologna through its arcaded streets, lively street life, and the ubiquitous granigliato paving (misnamed terrazzo: one of several signs that his Italian is shaky).
But from all this and from the people he interacts with, even in sexual intimacy, he keeps his distance because he is an observer of things and in that sense, unemotional; perhaps a little flat when it comes to personal relationships and interactions. The climax builds slowly when he hides in a confessional so that he can spend the whole night alone in a church. This leads to a tour-de-force of description of a nightmarish bad trip of surreal hallucinations based on the sculptures and decorations that surround him: a magnificent culmination to his experience in Bologna that ends when he is found in the morning and unceremoniously thrown out by the priest.
The book is structured as short chapters interspersed with very short statements: sometimes these are only a sentence on the page, with the rest left blank. This is not an experimentalist gimmick; I think it's a suggestion to put the book down for a while, digest what you'e been reading, and then take it up again. That's the way we read nowadays: for half an hour or ten minutes at a time. This is a book that should be read as closely and carefully as it was written-
Like some other reviewers here, I’m scratching my head that Colm Tóibín was his editor; two writers could hardly be further apart.
I just hope this doesn't start attracting too many people to Bologna, a city where I lived and worked for some time. His ability to capture the details of this most beautiful city comes from his methodical descriptive technique, which seems to link him, perhaps tenuously, to the Oulipo movement. He captures Bologna through its arcaded streets, lively street life, and the ubiquitous granigliato paving (misnamed terrazzo: one of several signs that his Italian is shaky).
But from all this and from the people he interacts with, even in sexual intimacy, he keeps his distance because he is an observer of things and in that sense, unemotional; perhaps a little flat when it comes to personal relationships and interactions. The climax builds slowly when he hides in a confessional so that he can spend the whole night alone in a church. This leads to a tour-de-force of description of a nightmarish bad trip of surreal hallucinations based on the sculptures and decorations that surround him: a magnificent culmination to his experience in Bologna that ends when he is found in the morning and unceremoniously thrown out by the priest.
The book is structured as short chapters interspersed with very short statements: sometimes these are only a sentence on the page, with the rest left blank. This is not an experimentalist gimmick; I think it's a suggestion to put the book down for a while, digest what you'e been reading, and then take it up again. That's the way we read nowadays: for half an hour or ten minutes at a time. This is a book that should be read as closely and carefully as it was written-
Like some other reviewers here, I’m scratching my head that Colm Tóibín was his editor; two writers could hardly be further apart.
October 5, 2025
Only took me a week to read this short but fascinating read by hitherto unknown to me Irish writer. Ok I was attracted by the excellent cover design! Also by the fact that it was published by an indie press.
The story helped me to forget how disgusting the outside world is at the moment and maybe from now on I’m going to try and blank out all the Fascism I encounter online and just vanish into my own reading.
But it’s quite hard to escape the depression I feel sometimes. And the anger that I also feel towards the RW thugs trying to take over.
The story helped me to forget how disgusting the outside world is at the moment and maybe from now on I’m going to try and blank out all the Fascism I encounter online and just vanish into my own reading.
But it’s quite hard to escape the depression I feel sometimes. And the anger that I also feel towards the RW thugs trying to take over.
May 15, 2025
Stunning on the scale of its individual lyricisms in addition to the lyricism of the whole entire thing. I really liked thinking about rocks and sculptures and the capturing of one shocking, fleeting moment in a physical stone object forever in time. I really liked how memory was structured and how it kept becoming fractured through the page breaks
June 1, 2025
At first I struggled to get into the rhythm of the book, but in a quiet gentle way it draw me in and its images lingered after reading. It’s so well written at times I forgot that this was not a real life account by the author, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that before.
August 2, 2025
The first half of the book would have scored more from me, but I felt disappointed by the latter part which left me angry in parts. Angry!?!Valiant effort in terms of the writing, which I did like, but the narrative dropped off and didn't return. A confusing read, all told.
October 26, 2025
The title hoked me in initially, then the fact the author is Irish! Really enjoyed this book, it's very different but beautifully written and having lived in Italy previously, I loved all the detailed descriptions of Bologna.
November 30, 2025
I am not sure which genre this book fits. It is fiction. It is a short reflective read, it looks at how you live your life and how useful what you do is.
in the ned -what is it that really matters?
in the ned -what is it that really matters?
July 16, 2025
I found this book pretentious and unaffecting. It was simply not to my taste, sorry!
September 3, 2025
rocks geology, retrospective nostalgia nestled around rocks and minerals and a professional love, good stuff
November 9, 2025
No plot, no joy. Not my cup of tea.
December 23, 2025
Beautiful prose befitting the beautiful title
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews