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Dooneen
Bartholomew Port, known to all as Mew, steps into the bushes in a London park and steps out of the bushes in a Dublin one. Not only that – there are no cars; there are moving footpaths; there is no church; everything seems quite queer. Mew has arrived in a Dublin that is alive with song, with rumour, with ghosts, and with an unmistakable sense of insurgency. An unravelling, an impossibility, a gathering of voices and a single dream, Dooneen is the layered, allusive and wildly original new novel from Keith Ridgway, 'one of Ireland's best writers, in a country with no shortage of them' (Times).
325 pages, Paperback
About the author
Keith Ridgway
23 books122 followersKeith Ridgway is a Dubliner living in London.
His sixth novel, Dooneen, is published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, and by New Directions in June 2026.
His previous books include A Shock, which won the 2021 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Goldsmith’s Prize; Hawthorn & Child; and Animals. His first novel The Long Falling was filmed by Martin Provost as Où Va La Nuit in 2011.
He has been awarded the Prix Fémina Étranger and Premier Roman Étranger, the O Henry award, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
His sixth novel, Dooneen, is published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, and by New Directions in June 2026.
His previous books include A Shock, which won the 2021 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Goldsmith’s Prize; Hawthorn & Child; and Animals. His first novel The Long Falling was filmed by Martin Provost as Où Va La Nuit in 2011.
He has been awarded the Prix Fémina Étranger and Premier Roman Étranger, the O Henry award, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
Rocky Roads in Dublin
The marketing for Keith Ridgway’s “Dooneen” invites comparisons to Joyce, Beckett, and Kafka, raising expectations for an intensely intellectual experience. Recognizing this, the novel demanded attentive reading. Despite an appreciation for the author’s prose, tracing the underlying train of thought frequently proved challenging. Although I am hesitant to place the author alongside Beckett and Joyce, it is clear that their work often requires multiple readings to fully reveal its depth—a quality “Dooneen” may also share. Yet, engaging with this style proved more difficult than anticipated; reminiscent of some of my dense college courses, sheer resolve was not always enough to keep the narrative clear.
The stream-of-consciousness narrative and brief, punchy sentences left my mind reeling as I tried to discern where the book was heading. At points, I was plagued by the fear that I was failing to connect with the text. Wanting to trust in the author’s methods, I fought the urge to set it aside more than once and a few outside reviews reassured me there would be more clarification. It was amidst this fog of confusion, however, that the narrative’s actual shape began to emerge. The book follows Bartholomew "Mew" Port, a writer who undergoes a bizarre transition: he steps into the bushes in a London park and emerges in a surreal, transformed version of his native Dublin. This is a city without cars, where "clickers" (moving footpaths) have replaced traditional transport, and the air is thick with the tension of an impending political insurgency. Mew’s primary drive is a desperate, recurring longing to reconnect with his partner, Mootie, back in London. As he navigates this city, he becomes hopelessly entangled in revolutionary groups, ghosts, and political factions.
Beneath this intricate world-building, the novel functions as an epistolary love story trapped inside a thriller. It is a book that demands you trust the author’s methods, even when the plot feels like a fever dream. While the middle sections can feel dense and the political jargon— an ‘alphabet soup’ of endless groups, the protests, the administrative chaos—can be exhausting, whether the final resolution justifies that investment will likely depend on your patience for the book’s experimental structure.
Ultimately, the narrative's trajectory rewards that patience; as the peak approaches, the initial bewilderment begins to coalesce into a resolution where the story's various threads finally align. The themes of human connection and the struggle to reach a loved one when communication fails remain central, though they are often obscured by the political turmoil. “Dooneen” is far from a light read, and its non-linear storytelling style means it might not appeal to every reader. Yet, for those who choose to persevere, the novel delivers a memorable, albeit challenging, experience. In the end, it functions as an intricate puzzle that delivers a unique perspective on contemporary identity, assuming one is ready to navigate its dense arrangement.
Thank you to New Directions Books and Edelweiss Plus for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
The marketing for Keith Ridgway’s “Dooneen” invites comparisons to Joyce, Beckett, and Kafka, raising expectations for an intensely intellectual experience. Recognizing this, the novel demanded attentive reading. Despite an appreciation for the author’s prose, tracing the underlying train of thought frequently proved challenging. Although I am hesitant to place the author alongside Beckett and Joyce, it is clear that their work often requires multiple readings to fully reveal its depth—a quality “Dooneen” may also share. Yet, engaging with this style proved more difficult than anticipated; reminiscent of some of my dense college courses, sheer resolve was not always enough to keep the narrative clear.
The stream-of-consciousness narrative and brief, punchy sentences left my mind reeling as I tried to discern where the book was heading. At points, I was plagued by the fear that I was failing to connect with the text. Wanting to trust in the author’s methods, I fought the urge to set it aside more than once and a few outside reviews reassured me there would be more clarification. It was amidst this fog of confusion, however, that the narrative’s actual shape began to emerge. The book follows Bartholomew "Mew" Port, a writer who undergoes a bizarre transition: he steps into the bushes in a London park and emerges in a surreal, transformed version of his native Dublin. This is a city without cars, where "clickers" (moving footpaths) have replaced traditional transport, and the air is thick with the tension of an impending political insurgency. Mew’s primary drive is a desperate, recurring longing to reconnect with his partner, Mootie, back in London. As he navigates this city, he becomes hopelessly entangled in revolutionary groups, ghosts, and political factions.
Beneath this intricate world-building, the novel functions as an epistolary love story trapped inside a thriller. It is a book that demands you trust the author’s methods, even when the plot feels like a fever dream. While the middle sections can feel dense and the political jargon— an ‘alphabet soup’ of endless groups, the protests, the administrative chaos—can be exhausting, whether the final resolution justifies that investment will likely depend on your patience for the book’s experimental structure.
Ultimately, the narrative's trajectory rewards that patience; as the peak approaches, the initial bewilderment begins to coalesce into a resolution where the story's various threads finally align. The themes of human connection and the struggle to reach a loved one when communication fails remain central, though they are often obscured by the political turmoil. “Dooneen” is far from a light read, and its non-linear storytelling style means it might not appeal to every reader. Yet, for those who choose to persevere, the novel delivers a memorable, albeit challenging, experience. In the end, it functions as an intricate puzzle that delivers a unique perspective on contemporary identity, assuming one is ready to navigate its dense arrangement.
Thank you to New Directions Books and Edelweiss Plus for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
October 7, 2026
What am I doing? This pen, this paper. I cannot conjure you out of these marks that I make. That won't happen. Is it simply then... thinking? A remembering, a sort of exercise, an assertion? A noise, a sound, a pebble, a scratch in the bark of a tree, an arrow?
This way.
I make a mark. And hope you will notice it.
This other room where I sit writing to you. So different to that room where they sang for me. This view. These walls. This cold. All of it perplexes me. What is perplexing is that you are not in it. Where are you? Where are you Mootie? Mootie?
...
I will tell you - this is what I thought - step by step, how I came to be here. In as far as I know it. In as far as i can recall. How I rattled around the streets of Dublin.
How I was beaten and chased. How I was rescued, taken in. How those boys, these men - those desperately kind, elusive boys, these men - cared for me and carried me and saved my life. And all the other nonsense Mootie.
Shortlisted for the 2026 Goldsmiths Prize
The author’s second shortlisting (for a prize which favours the reinvention of the novel form, the Goldsmith does struggle to reinvent its own pool of shortlisted authors) after 2021 when he was listed for “A Shock” in 2021 (where it was easily the weakest for me on an excellent if too London centric list which included Isabel Waidner, Natasha Brown, Rebecca Watson and Claire Louise Bennett). For me more of a short story collection than a novel (although not seen by the prize as such) I described it as though someone made a collage of South London Life which was a combination of representational art and occasional more absurdist elements and which was made from overlapping pieces of material from the detritus of South London Life itself. It did however go on to win The 2022 James Tait Black Memorial Prize (Britain’s joint oldest literary prize).
This I have to say I found a stronger novel than its predecessor.
The epigraph features the folk song “Cliffs of Dooneen” – a song (as a footnote tells us) of uncertain provenance extoling the incomparable virtues of the (as a footnote also tells us) not entirely clearly located spot on the West Coast of Ireland.
It is written from an Irish clifftop refuge by the first party narrator Mew (Bartholomew Port) to his lover back in England Mootie (Mahmoud Habib), the two of them briefly introduced to us in a section where Mew travels to Ireland by what seems to be his standard (if always disconcerting method of transport) – a “spinner” which is effectively one of a number of portals between bushes in London parks and bushes in Dublin parks.
The Ireland he visits – ostensibly to take part in an arts festival – is increasingly in thrall to capitalist, rentier interests backed up by a variety of quasi military security forces; but it is also one on the verge of a large protest (and more militant action) by left wing self-styled pro-climate, pro-socialism, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, anti-property rights activists (with whom its fairly clear the author has a lot more sympathy than me – particularly reading this novel the week of the infamous Green Party conference resolution).
It is also though a Dublin in a world adjacent to but not identical to our own – as well as the spinners and some clickers (moving pathways) there is a sense that something is different and off-key and not just to us but also to Mootie. He seems unaware of exactly the conflict he has stumbled in to and also has a series of almost Kafkaesque encounters (starting with two singing hotel porters), some darker Beckettian moments and sees a series of ghostly child like figures (one of whom from authorial interviews was an early victim of the Irish rising and is seen by the author as also alluding to Gazan victims).
All of this at first is largely told to us in supposedly epistolary form – as Mew seeks to set out everything that happened to him in the month or two between his arrival and his hiding in the cliffs, still with the two porters – to Mootie (contact between Dublin and London seemingly cut off). As an aside the use of such a common and classically Victorian device to frame the first party narration was for me a little disappointing in a supposedly mould-breaking novel; but at the same time this part of the novel was enjoyable managing to combine a sense of off-beat humour with a wider sense of menace in a way not unreminiscent of M John Harrison (although without the weirdness).
As the narration progresses, Mew gets unwittingly drawn into the rebel forces (seen as something of a talisman for reasons as unclear to us as to him) as they plan a violent action against the government forces only to see their plans betrayed – this part told in a mixture of letters to Mootie and interviews with those who interact with him (again not necessarily a device I found particularly innovative). This part though becomes darker and strangely gripping and even though we already know things will not end well, the shock to Mootie of the abrupt violence inflicted by the state is transmitted to us effectively.
A worthwhile read.
June 17, 2026
Shortlisted for the 2026 Goldsmiths Prize
You don't like strikes sir?
Well he had to check I suppose. It seems to me now that if I hadn't said what I said next I might still be in that hotel room. Or I might have seen it a second time at least. Or slept in what looked like its very comfortable bed. And I might have returned to you Mootie. At some point over that collapsing weekend, from the smoke over Dublin to the smoke over London. Ifit had been possible.
But I said what I said. And it changed things. What I said Mootie, was this...
- The world is badly managed. Unjustly run. I like when people take a stand. And I try - as close to useless as I am - I try my best to stand by their side.
Something like that.
Doonen is Keith Ridgway's first novel since the Goldsmiths Prize shortlisted and James Tait Black Memorial Prize winning novel/connected short-stories A Shock.
That was a affectionate portrayal of South London with a socio-political edge, and here Ridgway turns his attention to Dublin - although the novel opens in London, and is told from a hideout in the cliffs of Dooneen, from the Jack McAuliffe ballad, on the west coast of Ireland.
The novel opens:
Two men strolled beside the Thames, east along Bermondsey Wall. For stretches they walked arm in arm, in close conversation. Or separate, in silence, glancing at the passers-by. Or they pointed across the choppy water to Wapping, and made jokes. A police boat moved up-river. At Cherry Garden Pier a small red dinghy fidgeted on the muddy waves. Dusk, and the lights coming on. They stopped in front of The Angel and debated for a moment, and went inside.
By the window in a corner they leaned towards each other. It was quiet. They talked, and laughed, and talked, and touched, and watched the darkness growing.
They talked about their landlord. About their rent. They sighed and reassured each other. They spoke of Gaza. They shook their heads and fell silent. They peered across the river and tried to imagine where Execution Dock might have stood. They talked about law, and government, and luck, and faith. They checked their phones. They talked again of Gaza. They fell silent. Then they talked about money. They talked about work. They laughed often. They gossiped about friends, housemates. They talked about the next day. About Dublin. Rent, again. The hot weather.
They left. They linked arms through Southwark Park and caught a bus to Peckham and walked to Havil Street, and home. Their names being Mahmoud Habib, and Bartholomew Port. Known to each other as Mootie, and Mew.
Shortly after Mew travels, via a 'spinner' (a portal) situated behind some bushes in Burgess Park, to Blessington Street Basin in Dublin, where he is presenting at a conference of some sort. Although this is a somewhat alternative ('wonky' in the author's words) Dublin - as well as the 'spinners', private cars have been largely replaced with 'clickers', moving footpaths.
Checking in to his hotel, prior to a reception at Dublin's castle he is accompanied to his room by two, initially rather comically overattentive porters, Charles and Vincent, reminiscent of Kafka's Artur and Jeremias. But when he enquires about news he had picked up en route to the hotel of some strike action, the two enquire as to his views on the matter, and, having ascertained his support (see opening quote) he ends up sucked into an underground world of resistance action, prior to a planned mass protest and general strike the next day.
- I won't be able to make it tomorrow, he said. Given everything that's happening. So it's nice to run into you Port. Are you going to the meeting?
- What's happening?
- Oh. What isn't? The big Jaffa demonstration of course, but also a lot of separate small actions planned, or so I'm told, and Ipro are going to be out...
- What's Jaffa?
-Justice And Housing For All, he sang. J-A-H-F-A.
Tenants, renters. Socialists the lot of them.
- What's Ipro?
- Ireland Protected. IPRO. Landlords. Bailiffs.
Vigilantes you might say. Rough lot. The implied muscle behind the RDC, and lots of overlap of course, false moustaches everywhere. And who knows. They appeared not long after DISH did. DISH is Dublin Initiative...
- For Socialist Housing. I've heard of them. What's RDC though?
- Rathúnas do Chách.
I just looked at him. And he just laughed.
- Meeting you said. What meeting?
- Public meeting at the Precious. You should come.
You'd get a better sense of it there than you would from me. Speakers from the tenants unions, the main ones anyway, from the non-payment campaigns, from the anti-capitalist parties, such as they are, climate groups, the whole shooting match.
(Rathúnas do Chách meaning, I believe, Prosperity for All)
The novel itself is largely told by Mew in letters he is writing from hiding, the strike having ended in bloody defeat, addressed to his beloved Mootie, although not expected to be received, London and Dublin having become cut off. But it also includes testimonies from others, and songs (which I understand are set to music in the audiobook). The novel also contains various allusions e.g. to Irish history and culture, some explicit/clear and others which I suspect eluded me (e.g. from interviews, a ghost character is a nod to one first casualties of the Easter Rising).
3.5 stars.
You don't like strikes sir?
Well he had to check I suppose. It seems to me now that if I hadn't said what I said next I might still be in that hotel room. Or I might have seen it a second time at least. Or slept in what looked like its very comfortable bed. And I might have returned to you Mootie. At some point over that collapsing weekend, from the smoke over Dublin to the smoke over London. Ifit had been possible.
But I said what I said. And it changed things. What I said Mootie, was this...
- The world is badly managed. Unjustly run. I like when people take a stand. And I try - as close to useless as I am - I try my best to stand by their side.
Something like that.
Doonen is Keith Ridgway's first novel since the Goldsmiths Prize shortlisted and James Tait Black Memorial Prize winning novel/connected short-stories A Shock.
That was a affectionate portrayal of South London with a socio-political edge, and here Ridgway turns his attention to Dublin - although the novel opens in London, and is told from a hideout in the cliffs of Dooneen, from the Jack McAuliffe ballad, on the west coast of Ireland.
The novel opens:
Two men strolled beside the Thames, east along Bermondsey Wall. For stretches they walked arm in arm, in close conversation. Or separate, in silence, glancing at the passers-by. Or they pointed across the choppy water to Wapping, and made jokes. A police boat moved up-river. At Cherry Garden Pier a small red dinghy fidgeted on the muddy waves. Dusk, and the lights coming on. They stopped in front of The Angel and debated for a moment, and went inside.
By the window in a corner they leaned towards each other. It was quiet. They talked, and laughed, and talked, and touched, and watched the darkness growing.
They talked about their landlord. About their rent. They sighed and reassured each other. They spoke of Gaza. They shook their heads and fell silent. They peered across the river and tried to imagine where Execution Dock might have stood. They talked about law, and government, and luck, and faith. They checked their phones. They talked again of Gaza. They fell silent. Then they talked about money. They talked about work. They laughed often. They gossiped about friends, housemates. They talked about the next day. About Dublin. Rent, again. The hot weather.
They left. They linked arms through Southwark Park and caught a bus to Peckham and walked to Havil Street, and home. Their names being Mahmoud Habib, and Bartholomew Port. Known to each other as Mootie, and Mew.
Shortly after Mew travels, via a 'spinner' (a portal) situated behind some bushes in Burgess Park, to Blessington Street Basin in Dublin, where he is presenting at a conference of some sort. Although this is a somewhat alternative ('wonky' in the author's words) Dublin - as well as the 'spinners', private cars have been largely replaced with 'clickers', moving footpaths.
Checking in to his hotel, prior to a reception at Dublin's castle he is accompanied to his room by two, initially rather comically overattentive porters, Charles and Vincent, reminiscent of Kafka's Artur and Jeremias. But when he enquires about news he had picked up en route to the hotel of some strike action, the two enquire as to his views on the matter, and, having ascertained his support (see opening quote) he ends up sucked into an underground world of resistance action, prior to a planned mass protest and general strike the next day.
- I won't be able to make it tomorrow, he said. Given everything that's happening. So it's nice to run into you Port. Are you going to the meeting?
- What's happening?
- Oh. What isn't? The big Jaffa demonstration of course, but also a lot of separate small actions planned, or so I'm told, and Ipro are going to be out...
- What's Jaffa?
-Justice And Housing For All, he sang. J-A-H-F-A.
Tenants, renters. Socialists the lot of them.
- What's Ipro?
- Ireland Protected. IPRO. Landlords. Bailiffs.
Vigilantes you might say. Rough lot. The implied muscle behind the RDC, and lots of overlap of course, false moustaches everywhere. And who knows. They appeared not long after DISH did. DISH is Dublin Initiative...
- For Socialist Housing. I've heard of them. What's RDC though?
- Rathúnas do Chách.
I just looked at him. And he just laughed.
- Meeting you said. What meeting?
- Public meeting at the Precious. You should come.
You'd get a better sense of it there than you would from me. Speakers from the tenants unions, the main ones anyway, from the non-payment campaigns, from the anti-capitalist parties, such as they are, climate groups, the whole shooting match.
(Rathúnas do Chách meaning, I believe, Prosperity for All)
The novel itself is largely told by Mew in letters he is writing from hiding, the strike having ended in bloody defeat, addressed to his beloved Mootie, although not expected to be received, London and Dublin having become cut off. But it also includes testimonies from others, and songs (which I understand are set to music in the audiobook). The novel also contains various allusions e.g. to Irish history and culture, some explicit/clear and others which I suspect eluded me (e.g. from interviews, a ghost character is a nod to one first casualties of the Easter Rising).
3.5 stars.
Read
May 3, 2026What an absolute fever dream of a novel that spits in your face and laughs every time you try to piece together what genre you’re even reading. This is a jarring and experimental novel about a writer who accidentally gets swept up in a political revolt (with Keith Ridgway really going off the rails in the final act), BUT is importantly also very readable on a sentence to sentence level and hilarious.
As the main Mew character says, I have never been to Dublin and have no clue if the city is captured like the publisher proclaims, but damn the dialogue here is real and just about the best I’ve read all year.
I’m kind of shocked that Ridgway has gotten such scant attention in the book world given how solid his writing is here, but perhaps the Fitzcarraldo effect will take affect here. Definitely recommend!!
As the main Mew character says, I have never been to Dublin and have no clue if the city is captured like the publisher proclaims, but damn the dialogue here is real and just about the best I’ve read all year.
I’m kind of shocked that Ridgway has gotten such scant attention in the book world given how solid his writing is here, but perhaps the Fitzcarraldo effect will take affect here. Definitely recommend!!
July 26, 2026
A writer travels from his home in London to attend literary festival in his native Dublin, but he arrives to mayhem in the city. There is barely any traffic, no private vehicles, just trams and ‘clickers’, a sort of moving sidewalk, now provide the transport. There is unrest amongst residents who are planning protests against the government; they are exploited economically and treated with disdain.
The writer is Bartholomew Port, or Mew, the narrative largely in the first person, with Mew addressing his partner, could be husband, Mootie, back in London.
His plans to attend the festival get interrupted by the protests.
There are shades of Ridgway at his best here, particularly in two early scenes, a meeting with a friend in a tearoom, and his arrival at his hotel room with two young porters. I am a great fan of The Spectacular and Hawthorn & Child.
As a whole, the book will take me some time to appreciate fully. It is a bleak view of an insurrectionist Dublin set in the near future, a story of love and loss. Though he is only ever referred to, and does not actually appear, the role played by Mootie is a key one, is he alive or dead, does he even exist..
And the significance of the element of fantasy at the very start, as Mew walks through a London park and exits directly into Dublin, is more relevant having finished the book.
The writer is Bartholomew Port, or Mew, the narrative largely in the first person, with Mew addressing his partner, could be husband, Mootie, back in London.
His plans to attend the festival get interrupted by the protests.
There are shades of Ridgway at his best here, particularly in two early scenes, a meeting with a friend in a tearoom, and his arrival at his hotel room with two young porters. I am a great fan of The Spectacular and Hawthorn & Child.
As a whole, the book will take me some time to appreciate fully. It is a bleak view of an insurrectionist Dublin set in the near future, a story of love and loss. Though he is only ever referred to, and does not actually appear, the role played by Mootie is a key one, is he alive or dead, does he even exist..
And the significance of the element of fantasy at the very start, as Mew walks through a London park and exits directly into Dublin, is more relevant having finished the book.
June 29, 2026
Although this has superficial similarities to The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro I found it didn't quite live up to its initial promise.
The altered version of Dublin with its absence of cars and moving walkways was a good start but after that there wasn't enough strangeness for my liking.
The narrator's adventures with the insurrectionists didn't feel like it had enough jeopardy and I don't know why they felt they had to protect him.
The altered version of Dublin with its absence of cars and moving walkways was a good start but after that there wasn't enough strangeness for my liking.
The narrator's adventures with the insurrectionists didn't feel like it had enough jeopardy and I don't know why they felt they had to protect him.
September 10, 2026
For the 2nd review in a row, I really wanted to like this more. But despite the charming queer protagonist, uncanny space-time disruptions, and tense misadventures in a world too similar to our own dark present circumstances, all that trampling around in dark tunnels was just too much for me. (And it took awhile to get to said tunnels.) Sorry.
Read
August 10, 2026Such a simultaneously tender and brutal vision of queer anarchist insurrection. While the protagonist's yearning for his partner anchors the story and, at the same time, projects that yearning toward a future that never comes, thus constructing a utopian horizon for queer desire, the queer collective undertakes an insurrectionary attack on the structures of an oppressive system, offering a map for practice in the present. The novel beautifully traces this queer anarchist utopian struggle, staring directly into the violent abyss of the state apparatus and the market. I hope Ridgway gets some recognition for this. It's breathtakingly good.
September 19, 2026
This is a frenetic, chaotic book that takes place in Dublin, in some future time, as uprisings are brewing all over the city. At first I was intrigued by the oddness of the writing. It's a brand new release and consists of letters, reflections really, to the main character's partner, Mootie, in London. But Mew (short for Bartholomew) doesn't know where Mootie is as he describes his harrowing experiences with people in a very changed, futuristic city.
Mew has relentless inner conversations, filled with anxiety and worry as people he once knew in Dublin tell him stories of these uprisings. He hallucinates at times and wonders if he's dreaming.
But enough is enough for me since I don't actually care what happens next in the meetings and civil disobedience, nor with Mew.
And what does the title mean? Is it ever explained?
If anyone read this I'd like to hear their thoughts.
Mew has relentless inner conversations, filled with anxiety and worry as people he once knew in Dublin tell him stories of these uprisings. He hallucinates at times and wonders if he's dreaming.
But enough is enough for me since I don't actually care what happens next in the meetings and civil disobedience, nor with Mew.
And what does the title mean? Is it ever explained?
If anyone read this I'd like to hear their thoughts.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I decided initially to drop it at the 20% mark. It's not a bad book but it didn't grab me. Maybe it's just not my thing. I was expecting a more mystical fantasy-style experience, and maybe it was getting there, but just reading about political unrest, organizations, meetings, protests, and abuse from landlords doesn't exactly entertain me and felt too non-fiction for me to want to keep going. All of these issues are dumped before the novel gives me a reason to care. Reading the synopsis sounds like it will get more interesting, but the opening was a bit too dry to want to wait for it.
The writing style is short and punchy with thoughts that would spread out and then come back together in a way that didn't flow well before I got my bearings. There are invented concepts like spinners and clickers that would lose me for a bit before falling into place later. The matter of fact sentences so far were too surface level for me and didn't give me a reason to invest in these people or their situation.
I found myself just uninterested in continuing for now, but will pick it back up later and will edit my review if I do.
_______________
At 50%
The story certainly got more exciting. Some interesting and mysterious plot for a bit, but then it descends into short monologues from random characters that I don't know or care about giving their opinions. More talk about insurrection and planning. So far the author has failed to make me care about these mostly-flat characters and their plan to fight the system. Lots and lots of pages about corrupt systems and landlords and blah blah blah. I am still just not invested.
______________
75%
Walking, tree with no leaves, clothes are weird, tunnels are spooky. I started skimming. While there's more plot, I still don't really care about what's happening or most of these side characters.
_____________
100%
This last bit grew on me. Full of action, heart, humor. The characters felt more real and the story was more interesting. If only the whole book had been more like this. The middle really dragged and the beginning was more flat and confusing. Having finished it now I'd like to reread it someday and see if I missed anything. At any point before the end I would have given 2 or 3 stars, but looking back it's grown on me. I'd have recommended reworking the earlier sections, giving depth to the characters to give me a reason to care about them and cutting way back on the over-explanations of the societal issues. Like 75 pages of that could be cut and it would be better for it.
Thank you WW Norton & Company for the advanced review copy.
The writing style is short and punchy with thoughts that would spread out and then come back together in a way that didn't flow well before I got my bearings. There are invented concepts like spinners and clickers that would lose me for a bit before falling into place later. The matter of fact sentences so far were too surface level for me and didn't give me a reason to invest in these people or their situation.
I found myself just uninterested in continuing for now, but will pick it back up later and will edit my review if I do.
_______________
At 50%
The story certainly got more exciting. Some interesting and mysterious plot for a bit, but then it descends into short monologues from random characters that I don't know or care about giving their opinions. More talk about insurrection and planning. So far the author has failed to make me care about these mostly-flat characters and their plan to fight the system. Lots and lots of pages about corrupt systems and landlords and blah blah blah. I am still just not invested.
______________
75%
Walking, tree with no leaves, clothes are weird, tunnels are spooky. I started skimming. While there's more plot, I still don't really care about what's happening or most of these side characters.
_____________
100%
This last bit grew on me. Full of action, heart, humor. The characters felt more real and the story was more interesting. If only the whole book had been more like this. The middle really dragged and the beginning was more flat and confusing. Having finished it now I'd like to reread it someday and see if I missed anything. At any point before the end I would have given 2 or 3 stars, but looking back it's grown on me. I'd have recommended reworking the earlier sections, giving depth to the characters to give me a reason to care about them and cutting way back on the over-explanations of the societal issues. Like 75 pages of that could be cut and it would be better for it.
Thank you WW Norton & Company for the advanced review copy.
June 16, 2026
A man inexplicably walks into a bush in South London and emerges into a strange, timeless near future version of Dublin with a confusing conflict of landlords, insurrectionists and police. The protagonist has a beautiful, bemused, poetic tone of voice, yearning for his lover. Interesting multiple point of view structure.
An artful mix of genres, alluding to a complex Irish history. The dialog is pitch perfect and often very funny. Family crisp sandwiches and never ending tea.
Really heart rending coda.
What an amazing writer.
An artful mix of genres, alluding to a complex Irish history. The dialog is pitch perfect and often very funny. Family crisp sandwiches and never ending tea.
Really heart rending coda.
What an amazing writer.
September 28, 2026
The premise is interesting, but its execution falls short..
The book is about a man who somehow is transported from London to Dublin, in a politically unstable world. Ridgway never really explains things or events as they happen, which is supposed to make for a reading experience reminiscent of Kafka, but the plot isn't interesting enough to feel intrigued by it, it often just feels confusing and a little annoying. Also, all the 'politics' feel like they are just thrown in for the sake of it. There's nothing really meaningful, just vague mentions of being anti-landlord. Some mention of Irish history. A vaguely leftist organization hiding out in tunnels.
The prose is nice at times, but the novel is pretty disappointing overall.
The book is about a man who somehow is transported from London to Dublin, in a politically unstable world. Ridgway never really explains things or events as they happen, which is supposed to make for a reading experience reminiscent of Kafka, but the plot isn't interesting enough to feel intrigued by it, it often just feels confusing and a little annoying. Also, all the 'politics' feel like they are just thrown in for the sake of it. There's nothing really meaningful, just vague mentions of being anti-landlord. Some mention of Irish history. A vaguely leftist organization hiding out in tunnels.
The prose is nice at times, but the novel is pretty disappointing overall.
Read
September 7, 2026strange and not what I expected. I enjoyed the letter writing aspect and the narration very much, but pov shifting and some of the character introductions threw me. i had a hard time visualizing, maybe because i knew some of the locations but not all, so couldn’t orient myself—no idea what you’d think if you didn’t know any of Dublin. found parts of this very, very funny, and other parts made me very sad.
October 22, 2026
the reader, like the narrator, is simply along for the ride. we don’t get much context or observation from Mew as he’s swept up in a dreamlike insurrectionist movement, more like stumbling through a fog alongside him. perhaps a reflection on passivity during activism, but didn’t quite land for me.
July 9, 2026
fever dreamy, genre bending, bit all over the place but in a interesting and clever way, an enjoyable read overall
August 7, 2026
Mew ankommer Dublin gjennom en busk i London for å holde et foredrag. I løpet av et døgn eller noe sånt - tid er et løst begrep i denne boka - ankommer han et hotell på tross av at familien hans bor i byen og han fortsatt har det gamle rommet sitt ledig, og han blir involvert i en politisk undergrunnsbevegelse som varer og varer og varer, gjennom tunneler, gjennom Dublins gater, og ikke minst gjennom brevene (kladdebøkene) til sin kjære Mootie i London.
Dette er en av de vanskeligste, tyngste bøkene jeg har lest i år. Siden handlingen foregår i Dublin og også handler om en mann som vender tilbake og vandrer noe fortapt i gatene mens han tenker på sin kjære, er det lett å dra paralleller til Ulysses av James Joyce. De er like vanskelig tilgjengelige begge to.
Boka har fantastiske grep (busk i London fører til Dublin), absurde grep (betjeningen på hotellet har mange forskjellige navn på tross av at de er de samme, og alle som har lest badekar-scenen veit hva jeg mener), og det har undertoner av politisk og samfunnskritisk thriller. Det dukker også opp et spøkelse, og det er også mulig at hovedpersonen sjøl, snakker fra den andre siden.
Altså, en bok som sprenger alle sjanger-grenser, noe som skaper fullstendig kaos i hodet på denne leseren.
Boka får 3,5* fordi det er nesten uforståelig hvordan en forfatter har klart å gjennomføre dette prosjektet, men jeg velger å justere ned fordi det er så lite hjelp å få i teksten.
Se for øvrig dette intervjuet: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/bo...
Et utdrag fra intervjuet:
Jeg veit ikke hvem som trenger å vite det, men hadde det ikke vært fordi jeg absolutt skulle strikke ferdig en jakke hadde jeg lukket boka midtveis. Jeg er veldig stolt over at jeg klarte å lese denne ferdig.
Kjøpt som lydbok på britiske Audible.
Dette er en av de vanskeligste, tyngste bøkene jeg har lest i år. Siden handlingen foregår i Dublin og også handler om en mann som vender tilbake og vandrer noe fortapt i gatene mens han tenker på sin kjære, er det lett å dra paralleller til Ulysses av James Joyce. De er like vanskelig tilgjengelige begge to.
Boka har fantastiske grep (busk i London fører til Dublin), absurde grep (betjeningen på hotellet har mange forskjellige navn på tross av at de er de samme, og alle som har lest badekar-scenen veit hva jeg mener), og det har undertoner av politisk og samfunnskritisk thriller. Det dukker også opp et spøkelse, og det er også mulig at hovedpersonen sjøl, snakker fra den andre siden.
Altså, en bok som sprenger alle sjanger-grenser, noe som skaper fullstendig kaos i hodet på denne leseren.
Boka får 3,5* fordi det er nesten uforståelig hvordan en forfatter har klart å gjennomføre dette prosjektet, men jeg velger å justere ned fordi det er så lite hjelp å få i teksten.
Se for øvrig dette intervjuet: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/bo...
Et utdrag fra intervjuet:
What have you read lately that you’ve enjoyed?
Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume novels are just fantastic. They’re at once weighty, philosophical and compulsive reading. Han Kang’s books We Do Not Part and Human Acts are powerful pieces of writing. Olga Ravn’s The Wax Child is terrific, an earthy, sensual work of imagination.
Jeg veit ikke hvem som trenger å vite det, men hadde det ikke vært fordi jeg absolutt skulle strikke ferdig en jakke hadde jeg lukket boka midtveis. Jeg er veldig stolt over at jeg klarte å lese denne ferdig.
Kjøpt som lydbok på britiske Audible.
August 8, 2026
When we settle down away from home, returning home could feel like a dream. Sometimes the “feel like” can be as real as it is metaphorical and symbolic. Keith Ridgway’s protagonist, the writer Bartholomew Port, known more intimately as Mew, lives in London with his partner Mootie. A literary festival in Dublin is his chance to go home. But rather than taking a plane or a boat, Mew vanishes in a bush in Camberwell’s Burgess Park and emerges in a place none other than his hometown. Yet, the Dublin he finds himself in is an othering place. He feels othered. It seems a futuristic city with trams and moving sidewalks (clickers) as transit.
A typical dreamscape, for those who remember their dreams, happens when Mew walks into his childhood home. Everybody — mother, father, sister, and nieces — seems both up to date about Mew’s life in London, one that is shared with Mootie, but also stuck in time; so close yet so unreachable. Soon after Mew replaces his damaged pants with his father’s, a materiality of the familiar/familial that should dispel the suspicion of a dreamworld, he finds a strange boy lying in his old bed who is only visible to him, for a solitary moment. The physicality of the boy does not add up to the realm of the real. Then the boy disappears as if he never existed when Mew brings everyone to the bedroom. Is it the past his homecoming led him to, or is it the future? Or the past that is the future?
In Mew’s instant letters to Mootie, the past-future dreamscape quickly unfurls in the rest of the city where Mew has recently learned from an old friend, Dinny, that concurrent with the literary festival will be a city-wide civil unrest over housing injustice and the corrupt partnership between landlords and policy-makers. An exile in his own home city, Mew walks like a specter into the crowds that are gathering and enlarging as the momentum of the weekend’s protest arises. With a confusingly naïve lack of political awareness and determination, Mew tries to make sense of the ground-shaking class and immigration war in which the mainstream media sides with the corporate government. Asking sensitive questions in the vicinity of guards of the privileged who are offended by the rallies against landlords, Mew puts in danger both his own and other working-class rally members’ safety.
The temporal ambivalence of the dreamscape continues. Mew seems to be known and expected by the unrest organizers who have held committee meetings to decide to take him in and pay the price of protecting him as if his first-hand witnessing and potential survival of a disaster (if things go wrong) would be the only evidence of the government’s violent suppression of the working people. Yet, Mew believes he is seeing these activists for the first time. It is never clear how far his doubt of the others’ reception and knowledge of him goes, though he does end up suspecting the leader’s motivation of having him in the team. One would think that following a clearly political action has to come from an unambiguous commitment to the cause, but Mew’s mingling with the planners of an insurrection to seize the garda headquarters is entirely involuntary, as is driven by an invisible plot that is at once written and yet to be written, at once by Mew and someone else. In other words, Mew is both the dreamer and the dreamed.
The underground insurrection plan turns out to have been penetrated. The prepared police and military forces readily crushed the operation, sending the activists running for their lives. While Mew’s point of view remains primary (wishing that he is in a dream and is of no interest to the Dublin authorities), his presence in the escape and hiding also becomes the object of others’ witnessing in passing. From the victims to the authorities, the people spoken to by an unidentified interviewer (could be his waking self from the future?) recalled little impression of Mew’s fleeting appearance.
The war against people on the street stirs the memory of the Troubles. But Mew’s commitment to returning to London, rather than regrounding in Dublin, raises numerous questions about the “class” of the international literati in the time since the tumultuous 20th century. In what position will they face the recurrence of 20th-century injustice in the complications of 21st-century technologies? Is their writing going to be part of the political cause or a flee(t)ing point of view through which to maintain their professionalism in an insular environment? Frequently traveling with ease or settling permanently in a foreign country, how would they embed in their writing and scholarship the feeling of an exile at home, if they do return home? How do they confront and represent a difficult, alienating homecoming that intricately weaves the troubles of “home” (time, distance, and intimate memory) with those of the home city (economy, politics, labor, and social unrest), knowing that a linear chronological order will not save them from the ambivalence of the past and the future? What, if we keep pressing, do they make of “difference” from such an ambivalent, dreamy standpoint of “exile is home is exile,” and of “the future is the past is the future” (Chicago Review of Books)? What will become of them through the attempts of writing of “difference”?
A typical dreamscape, for those who remember their dreams, happens when Mew walks into his childhood home. Everybody — mother, father, sister, and nieces — seems both up to date about Mew’s life in London, one that is shared with Mootie, but also stuck in time; so close yet so unreachable. Soon after Mew replaces his damaged pants with his father’s, a materiality of the familiar/familial that should dispel the suspicion of a dreamworld, he finds a strange boy lying in his old bed who is only visible to him, for a solitary moment. The physicality of the boy does not add up to the realm of the real. Then the boy disappears as if he never existed when Mew brings everyone to the bedroom. Is it the past his homecoming led him to, or is it the future? Or the past that is the future?
In Mew’s instant letters to Mootie, the past-future dreamscape quickly unfurls in the rest of the city where Mew has recently learned from an old friend, Dinny, that concurrent with the literary festival will be a city-wide civil unrest over housing injustice and the corrupt partnership between landlords and policy-makers. An exile in his own home city, Mew walks like a specter into the crowds that are gathering and enlarging as the momentum of the weekend’s protest arises. With a confusingly naïve lack of political awareness and determination, Mew tries to make sense of the ground-shaking class and immigration war in which the mainstream media sides with the corporate government. Asking sensitive questions in the vicinity of guards of the privileged who are offended by the rallies against landlords, Mew puts in danger both his own and other working-class rally members’ safety.
The temporal ambivalence of the dreamscape continues. Mew seems to be known and expected by the unrest organizers who have held committee meetings to decide to take him in and pay the price of protecting him as if his first-hand witnessing and potential survival of a disaster (if things go wrong) would be the only evidence of the government’s violent suppression of the working people. Yet, Mew believes he is seeing these activists for the first time. It is never clear how far his doubt of the others’ reception and knowledge of him goes, though he does end up suspecting the leader’s motivation of having him in the team. One would think that following a clearly political action has to come from an unambiguous commitment to the cause, but Mew’s mingling with the planners of an insurrection to seize the garda headquarters is entirely involuntary, as is driven by an invisible plot that is at once written and yet to be written, at once by Mew and someone else. In other words, Mew is both the dreamer and the dreamed.
The underground insurrection plan turns out to have been penetrated. The prepared police and military forces readily crushed the operation, sending the activists running for their lives. While Mew’s point of view remains primary (wishing that he is in a dream and is of no interest to the Dublin authorities), his presence in the escape and hiding also becomes the object of others’ witnessing in passing. From the victims to the authorities, the people spoken to by an unidentified interviewer (could be his waking self from the future?) recalled little impression of Mew’s fleeting appearance.
The war against people on the street stirs the memory of the Troubles. But Mew’s commitment to returning to London, rather than regrounding in Dublin, raises numerous questions about the “class” of the international literati in the time since the tumultuous 20th century. In what position will they face the recurrence of 20th-century injustice in the complications of 21st-century technologies? Is their writing going to be part of the political cause or a flee(t)ing point of view through which to maintain their professionalism in an insular environment? Frequently traveling with ease or settling permanently in a foreign country, how would they embed in their writing and scholarship the feeling of an exile at home, if they do return home? How do they confront and represent a difficult, alienating homecoming that intricately weaves the troubles of “home” (time, distance, and intimate memory) with those of the home city (economy, politics, labor, and social unrest), knowing that a linear chronological order will not save them from the ambivalence of the past and the future? What, if we keep pressing, do they make of “difference” from such an ambivalent, dreamy standpoint of “exile is home is exile,” and of “the future is the past is the future” (Chicago Review of Books)? What will become of them through the attempts of writing of “difference”?
Read
October 6, 2026Shortlisted for the 2026 Goldsmiths Prize
You may travel far far from your own native home
Far away o'er the mountains far away o'er
the foam
But of all the fine places that I've ever seen There is none to compare with the Cliffs of Dooneen
Take a view o'er the mountains fine sights you'll see there
You'll see the high rocky mountains on the west coast of Clare
And the towns of Kilkee and Kilrush can be seen
From the high rocky slopes of the Cliffs of Dooneen
It's a nice place to be on a fine summer's day
Watching all the wild flowers that ne'er do decay
And the hare and lofty pheasant are plain to be seen
Making homes for their young round the Cliffs of Dooneen
Fare thee well to Dooneen fare thee well for a while
And to all the fine people I'm leaving behind
To the streams and the meadows where late I have been
And the high rocky slopes of the Cliffs of Dooneen
—Jack McAuliffe, "The Cliffs of Dooneen"
Debate continues concerning the cliffs named in the song — whether they are in County Clare or County Kerry, or whether they exist at all. And though Jack McAuliffe is credited, the only source for this is a man called Liam Buckley, who heard it from his mother.
*
What am I looking at? Ships?
Can't be ships.
A sort of rubble on the horizon. Shimmering. As if a desert. Can't be a desert.
Not with the scent of earth in my nostrils. A wide damp space then. Perhaps not wide so much as flat. A garden? A field.
Hills rolling out to the sea. No. No hills. No sea. A wasteland of plains. A light rain. No rain. A low light. Light, anyway.
I can think of nowhere specific now, other than Dublin. It all boils down to
Dublin.
Where am I, Mootie?
That's what I wondered, for a moment.
[eh… okay. maybe 3 stars? tho definitely 1000000% recommend the audiobook!! either alone or with the text. so great to hear the songs sung + the accent & all.]
/////////////
2026 Goldsmiths Prize
in-progress ranking of shortlist
—The Vivisectors, Missouri Williams
—Attention-Seeking Behavior, Aea Varfis-van Warmelo
—What Am I, a Deer? Polly Barton
—Said the Dead, Doireann Ní Ghríofa
—Dooneen, Keith Ridgway
[5/6 read • up next: The Rouse, China Miéville]
You may travel far far from your own native home
Far away o'er the mountains far away o'er
the foam
But of all the fine places that I've ever seen There is none to compare with the Cliffs of Dooneen
Take a view o'er the mountains fine sights you'll see there
You'll see the high rocky mountains on the west coast of Clare
And the towns of Kilkee and Kilrush can be seen
From the high rocky slopes of the Cliffs of Dooneen
It's a nice place to be on a fine summer's day
Watching all the wild flowers that ne'er do decay
And the hare and lofty pheasant are plain to be seen
Making homes for their young round the Cliffs of Dooneen
Fare thee well to Dooneen fare thee well for a while
And to all the fine people I'm leaving behind
To the streams and the meadows where late I have been
And the high rocky slopes of the Cliffs of Dooneen
—Jack McAuliffe, "The Cliffs of Dooneen"
Debate continues concerning the cliffs named in the song — whether they are in County Clare or County Kerry, or whether they exist at all. And though Jack McAuliffe is credited, the only source for this is a man called Liam Buckley, who heard it from his mother.
*
What am I looking at? Ships?
Can't be ships.
A sort of rubble on the horizon. Shimmering. As if a desert. Can't be a desert.
Not with the scent of earth in my nostrils. A wide damp space then. Perhaps not wide so much as flat. A garden? A field.
Hills rolling out to the sea. No. No hills. No sea. A wasteland of plains. A light rain. No rain. A low light. Light, anyway.
I can think of nowhere specific now, other than Dublin. It all boils down to
Dublin.
Where am I, Mootie?
That's what I wondered, for a moment.
[eh… okay. maybe 3 stars? tho definitely 1000000% recommend the audiobook!! either alone or with the text. so great to hear the songs sung + the accent & all.]
/////////////
2026 Goldsmiths Prize
in-progress ranking of shortlist
—The Vivisectors, Missouri Williams
—Attention-Seeking Behavior, Aea Varfis-van Warmelo
—What Am I, a Deer? Polly Barton
—Said the Dead, Doireann Ní Ghríofa
—Dooneen, Keith Ridgway
[5/6 read • up next: The Rouse, China Miéville]
September 24, 2026
Very interesting, I loved the prose style and the disorienting setting, a Dublin that seems to be in the near future, with the implied ravages of climate change and social unrest rocking the world, but with a protagonist that seems wholly disconnected from it. Still, the narrator journeys through Dublin, reminiscing, and ends caught up with a bunch of revolutionaries, while constantly thinking of his lover. I will say I liked the first half better, and as Mew joined the revolutionaries I found myself missing the strange wanderings, but there were a lot of beautiful moments throughout the book.
September 30, 2026
Painfully melancholic, dystopian but not far from reality, and beautifully descriptive. I found myself hanging on every word and I fear I need to re-read pretty much immediately. I wish I could write a more in depth review, but I genuinely have no words right now, just adoration for this cleverly crafted book.
October 10, 2026
Words i dont have!
June 26, 2026
KEITH RIDGWAY HIVE, RISE UP.
i love when a dublin book doesnt make any effort to translate itself so it can be better understood by people in other cities or countries. yup the bleedin dubs and fuck fine gael and fianna fail and landlordism
i love when a dublin book doesnt make any effort to translate itself so it can be better understood by people in other cities or countries. yup the bleedin dubs and fuck fine gael and fianna fail and landlordism
August 8, 2026
Every time I felt myself lost in the whirlpool of this book I’d refocus my eyes and just read a sentence, and each individual sentence on its own was so rewarding to read, crafted with such care, that I’d feel encouraged to keep going. That would help me settle myself against the feelings of being jostled around nonstop.
Mew’s pure, clear love (something to envy, something to behold) for Mootie felt like a rope that Ridgway would throw the reader, too. So there is help along the way but more or less this book is a roiling storm and a lot of fun and also very bleak.
I dogeared this passage:
Older couple. Nervous sorts. Have to feel for them. Not trusting. Little bit of racism there, ingested over the years, they can’t even understand it themselves. Scared of strangers. Not hostile, scared. Well, one stick sparks the other. Ignorant. Big layer of ignorance cultivated over a lifetime, covering up their decency, which is innate, as it tends to be. Just my view. Apart from that you can walk through from house to house, inside out. Around the whole block as you say. Around the field. Except for the house at the back. They still have their little back garden with its little walls. Their own fraction of the field. Some people just can’t share. Doesn’t make them bad people. It’s just a condition. It’s their condition.
Mew’s pure, clear love (something to envy, something to behold) for Mootie felt like a rope that Ridgway would throw the reader, too. So there is help along the way but more or less this book is a roiling storm and a lot of fun and also very bleak.
I dogeared this passage:
Older couple. Nervous sorts. Have to feel for them. Not trusting. Little bit of racism there, ingested over the years, they can’t even understand it themselves. Scared of strangers. Not hostile, scared. Well, one stick sparks the other. Ignorant. Big layer of ignorance cultivated over a lifetime, covering up their decency, which is innate, as it tends to be. Just my view. Apart from that you can walk through from house to house, inside out. Around the whole block as you say. Around the field. Except for the house at the back. They still have their little back garden with its little walls. Their own fraction of the field. Some people just can’t share. Doesn’t make them bad people. It’s just a condition. It’s their condition.
August 25, 2026
Starts fast and good, pulls a muscle, then limps a long , long way to the finish line. Admirable, but not a medal performance.
October 13, 2026
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2026
Review to follow.
Review to follow.
September 3, 2026
1.5
Some lovely writing but not for me at all
Some lovely writing but not for me at all
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
May contain mild spoilers
Something has happened in the past. It usually does. Or did. Sometimes we can point to it, or follow the breadcrumbs of cause and effect that led from this to that. Sometimes the facts are unknown, or hidden, and we have to accept things at face value. We hang up our hang-ups and suspend our disbelief, alongside our dangling participles and man bits.
A man enters a park in one city and emerges from a park in another city. The first city is London, the second Dublin, the man’s erstwhile home. The man is Port, passed to the left, clockwise, chronological for want of other logic. His trousers are fouled, or at least dirty. The trousers are replaced, twice. The first replacement splits. The second holds. We follow Port around Dublin’s car-free streets. Some great change has happened. Motor vehicles have been replaced by clicking conveyor belts. We suspend our disbelief. Bike couriers and carters have survived the vehicular cull.
More durable is capital’s hold over the capital, landlords and government working hand in hand, one hand washing the other, both hands often those of the same body. The people are revolting. Much is known but unspoken. There are meetings, rallies, protests, things Port half-understands. He sympathises and goes along, getting deeper, eventually plunging underground, unsure of his destination or his new comrades’ goals. Why he is there at all, is a question he and the reader are both left pondering.
Is this the future? Some alternate present? At times it could be the past. The author carefully avoids the city centre territory of the streets of Moore and Henry. There is no mention of the GPO, yet the reader would be unsurprised at the mention of Sackville Street. This is familiar territory for any Dubliner. This is familiar history for anyone Irish, every story in our collective history hinging on the sigh-inducing denouement, "there was a traitor in their midst".
We know nothing of the traitor, or traitors. We know everything of them. The brave cowardice of self-preservation a healthier path by far than heroic self-sacrifice. How much of a traitor is our friend Port? Enough. Probably. Probably more than enough.
Did I mention that this is a love story? I doubt I'll read a more engaging novel this year.
Something has happened in the past. It usually does. Or did. Sometimes we can point to it, or follow the breadcrumbs of cause and effect that led from this to that. Sometimes the facts are unknown, or hidden, and we have to accept things at face value. We hang up our hang-ups and suspend our disbelief, alongside our dangling participles and man bits.
A man enters a park in one city and emerges from a park in another city. The first city is London, the second Dublin, the man’s erstwhile home. The man is Port, passed to the left, clockwise, chronological for want of other logic. His trousers are fouled, or at least dirty. The trousers are replaced, twice. The first replacement splits. The second holds. We follow Port around Dublin’s car-free streets. Some great change has happened. Motor vehicles have been replaced by clicking conveyor belts. We suspend our disbelief. Bike couriers and carters have survived the vehicular cull.
More durable is capital’s hold over the capital, landlords and government working hand in hand, one hand washing the other, both hands often those of the same body. The people are revolting. Much is known but unspoken. There are meetings, rallies, protests, things Port half-understands. He sympathises and goes along, getting deeper, eventually plunging underground, unsure of his destination or his new comrades’ goals. Why he is there at all, is a question he and the reader are both left pondering.
Is this the future? Some alternate present? At times it could be the past. The author carefully avoids the city centre territory of the streets of Moore and Henry. There is no mention of the GPO, yet the reader would be unsurprised at the mention of Sackville Street. This is familiar territory for any Dubliner. This is familiar history for anyone Irish, every story in our collective history hinging on the sigh-inducing denouement, "there was a traitor in their midst".
We know nothing of the traitor, or traitors. We know everything of them. The brave cowardice of self-preservation a healthier path by far than heroic self-sacrifice. How much of a traitor is our friend Port? Enough. Probably. Probably more than enough.
Did I mention that this is a love story? I doubt I'll read a more engaging novel this year.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Have you ever found yourself reading a book where your internal dialogue is constantly screaming, "What am I reading?!"—this book is exactly that. Reading it made me feel like the Little Engine that Could; I was slowly, slowly pushing my way through the narrative until I finally made it over the hill to a gentle, thought-provoking conclusion.
If you are accustomed to long, flowing, beautiful prose, your brain might automatically revolt against the writing style at first—mine certainly did. The book is composed of very short sentences and quick thoughts, capturing a stream-of-consciousness style as Mew (Bartholomew) writes to his lover, Mootie, who is back home in London. Recounting his play-by-play experiences in Dublin, the story is a total whirlwind that constantly shifts between storylines, perspectives, facts, and pronouns leaving you perplexed.
Mew is always tired, perpetually confused, and frequently questioning things. By the halfway mark, the tone shifts into something much heavier, darker, and grimmer amidst political upheaval. However, the last 20% of the book flows wonderfully; I became invested and finally couldn't put it down.
I truly had no idea where the story was heading or what my final opinion would be until the very last words. While I usually dislike open-ended conclusions, I didn't mind this one at all because it's thought-provoking in such a deep and unique way. This book is perfect for readers who enjoy stories that are a little bit 'out there' and completely different. I couldn't rate it any less than a 4/5 for such a uniquely memorable experience.
If you are accustomed to long, flowing, beautiful prose, your brain might automatically revolt against the writing style at first—mine certainly did. The book is composed of very short sentences and quick thoughts, capturing a stream-of-consciousness style as Mew (Bartholomew) writes to his lover, Mootie, who is back home in London. Recounting his play-by-play experiences in Dublin, the story is a total whirlwind that constantly shifts between storylines, perspectives, facts, and pronouns leaving you perplexed.
Mew is always tired, perpetually confused, and frequently questioning things. By the halfway mark, the tone shifts into something much heavier, darker, and grimmer amidst political upheaval. However, the last 20% of the book flows wonderfully; I became invested and finally couldn't put it down.
I truly had no idea where the story was heading or what my final opinion would be until the very last words. While I usually dislike open-ended conclusions, I didn't mind this one at all because it's thought-provoking in such a deep and unique way. This book is perfect for readers who enjoy stories that are a little bit 'out there' and completely different. I couldn't rate it any less than a 4/5 for such a uniquely memorable experience.
October 7, 2026
Dooneen — Keith Ridgway
Mew is an Irish writer living in London who travels to Dublin for a literary festival. But this isn’t quite the Dublin he knows. Cars are gone, the city runs on trams, clickers and strange new ways of getting around, and political unrest is building everywhere. Mew finds himself caught up in demonstrations, strikes, underground groups and increasingly dangerous situations, while trying to make sense of what is happening—and what has happened to the people around him.
And then there’s Mootie, the person Mew is constantly writing to and wondering about:
Where are you, Mootie?
Maybe you are dead?
Maybe I am dead?
I picked this up at the library because it looked fun, then returned it because my pile was already ridiculous. Naturally, a couple of days later it appeared on the Goldsmiths Shortlist, so back to the library I went.
This is a very interesting book, but I mean that in the best possible way. The timeline slips around, reality feels slightly off, and Mew himself never seems completely certain about where he is or what is happening. I especially loved the writing because it feels so human. Mew describes things the way an actual person might think about them—not neatly, not clinically, but searching for the right words.
There is a lot going on here, and I certainly didn’t understand all of it while I was reading. But I didn’t need to. I liked being lost in it. And by the end, I cared much more about Mew than I expected to.
June 21, 2026
A profusely verbal literary extravaganza, an unravelling of a torrent of human subversion, a dream-like interlude that transports us amongst a propitious multitude of voices- that is how I would like to term Keith Ridgway's new novel. The writer- by virtue of laying out the topography of a city and its inhabitants- excels in creating a myth out of the entrails of the city of Dublin that the reader is transported to by a fortuitous act of literary teleportation. The Dublin that is presented here is very quaintly queer and bordering on revolt and sedition, and nonetheless parallels can be drawn between this and the Dublin of Joyce's Ulysses. And besides, the spotlight in the novel is held by the unforgettable voice of the narrator who is transported to a city on the point of insurrection, largely speaking from the medium of letters to his beloved in London, from his hideout in Dublin, with the two cities being cut off permanently. In essence, this is a fever dream of a novel that overwhelmed me with its various allusions to Irish history and culture, as well being celebrated at places by a couple of songs- so that I would need another reading to fully absorb its contents. Finally, I can only say that we have at last 'the 21st century Dublin novel'- which it is indeed on several levels.
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