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Nothing On Earth
'As fine as it is frightening' JOHN BANVILLE
'This one will stay with you like your shadow' Guardian
'Extraordinary . . . pitch-perfect' Irish Times
'Strange, beautiful and quietly terrifying' DONAL RYAN, author of The Spinning Heart
'Like many great works, it could so easily have all gone wrong if it hadn’t been done exactly right' Sunday Independent
It is the hottest August in living memory.
A frightened girl bangs on a door. A man answers. From the moment he invites her in, his world will never be the same again.
She will tell him about her family, and their strange life in the show home of an abandoned housing estate. The long, blistering days spent sunbathing; the airless nights filled with inexplicable noises; the words that appear on the windows, written in dust.
Why are members of her family disappearing, one by one? Is she telling the truth? Is he?
In a world where reality is beginning to blur, how can we know what to believe?
'This one will stay with you like your shadow' Guardian
'Extraordinary . . . pitch-perfect' Irish Times
'Strange, beautiful and quietly terrifying' DONAL RYAN, author of The Spinning Heart
'Like many great works, it could so easily have all gone wrong if it hadn’t been done exactly right' Sunday Independent
It is the hottest August in living memory.
A frightened girl bangs on a door. A man answers. From the moment he invites her in, his world will never be the same again.
She will tell him about her family, and their strange life in the show home of an abandoned housing estate. The long, blistering days spent sunbathing; the airless nights filled with inexplicable noises; the words that appear on the windows, written in dust.
Why are members of her family disappearing, one by one? Is she telling the truth? Is he?
In a world where reality is beginning to blur, how can we know what to believe?
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2016
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717 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 100 reviews
June 12, 2016
Nothing On Earth was a novel I read in one huge gulp of a sitting, obsessively from the very first page to the very last page. It is strangely, softly, utterly terrifying. And quite quite beautiful.
A reviewers dilemma here: I want to say so much about it, but this book, really, no. In a way it is indescribable in any way that would not spoil it – even now I’m not really sure about anything. It has a surreal, deeply disturbing, yet utterly gorgeous vibe to it, the prose is lyrical with an eerie cadence – I actually think I was hypnotised somewhat by it, certainly by the characters in the pages and most definitely by the story being told. A story that begins with a girl banging on a door one evening in Summer…
That girl. Oh good lord that girl…
Sometimes a book surprises and delights you, floors you with an unexpected rythym, those moments when you get something you are not quite prepared for. This book did that to me, I loved it. A brilliantly imaginative concept executed in haunting, compelling fashion and this was a unique reading experience for me – but don’t ask me to put into words why or why right now I feel like I’m in fight or flight mode and may never sleep again, but thats where I ended up.
I’ve never read a story that is so utterly alluring and elegantly written but has chilled me to the bone in quite the same way, this book has at its heart many things unseen, and something different there is no word for yet. Perhaps Conor O’Callaghan could come up with one, he is certainly talented enough to be creating language as well as using it. Nothing On Earth comes highly recommended from me – read it if you really do want something out of the ordinary and appreciate skill when you see it – or simply because its a blast of a tale told slowly but surely and with oodles of heart.
I’ll really need to read it again. Hang on what just happened?
A reviewers dilemma here: I want to say so much about it, but this book, really, no. In a way it is indescribable in any way that would not spoil it – even now I’m not really sure about anything. It has a surreal, deeply disturbing, yet utterly gorgeous vibe to it, the prose is lyrical with an eerie cadence – I actually think I was hypnotised somewhat by it, certainly by the characters in the pages and most definitely by the story being told. A story that begins with a girl banging on a door one evening in Summer…
That girl. Oh good lord that girl…
Sometimes a book surprises and delights you, floors you with an unexpected rythym, those moments when you get something you are not quite prepared for. This book did that to me, I loved it. A brilliantly imaginative concept executed in haunting, compelling fashion and this was a unique reading experience for me – but don’t ask me to put into words why or why right now I feel like I’m in fight or flight mode and may never sleep again, but thats where I ended up.
I’ve never read a story that is so utterly alluring and elegantly written but has chilled me to the bone in quite the same way, this book has at its heart many things unseen, and something different there is no word for yet. Perhaps Conor O’Callaghan could come up with one, he is certainly talented enough to be creating language as well as using it. Nothing On Earth comes highly recommended from me – read it if you really do want something out of the ordinary and appreciate skill when you see it – or simply because its a blast of a tale told slowly but surely and with oodles of heart.
I’ll really need to read it again. Hang on what just happened?
May 29, 2017
There is something inherently unsettling about a failed building estate (as housing developments are called in Britain). This is the fourth or fifth novel I've read in the past few years using such a setting. And this one, the best.
All those unrealized dreams and all that rotting material. A fitting metaphor for this truly terrifying debut novel. Don't read if you are looking for tidy answers to tidy questions. Not everything is made clear. I started it several times before it grabbed me by the neck and didn't let go until the final page. And don't read anything that summarizes the plot -- let the information wash up bit by bit.
All those unrealized dreams and all that rotting material. A fitting metaphor for this truly terrifying debut novel. Don't read if you are looking for tidy answers to tidy questions. Not everything is made clear. I started it several times before it grabbed me by the neck and didn't let go until the final page. And don't read anything that summarizes the plot -- let the information wash up bit by bit.
November 16, 2017
Is this a ghost story? Well the setting is a ghost estate somewhere outside of Dublin, Ireland.
http://cf.broadsheet.ie/wp-content/up...
The book begins with the appearance of a panicked 12-year-old girl. Her appearance at this particular house brings heaps of problems for the man who tries to help her. Who is her family? What happened to them?
It's hard to describe the appeal of this book. One thing I can say with confidence is that O'Callaghan creates a description of the lives of those who live in these half abandoned estates that captures their haunted horror. It also reinforces my impression that Tana French's attempt to write about ghost estates in Broken Harborwas feeble, with a ridiculous premise, as well as being very insulting with stereotypes of working class families. I haven't read French again (and won't). On the other hand O'Callahan displays a deft touch with this topic and weaves a haunting story.
http://cf.broadsheet.ie/wp-content/up...
The book begins with the appearance of a panicked 12-year-old girl. Her appearance at this particular house brings heaps of problems for the man who tries to help her. Who is her family? What happened to them?
It's hard to describe the appeal of this book. One thing I can say with confidence is that O'Callaghan creates a description of the lives of those who live in these half abandoned estates that captures their haunted horror. It also reinforces my impression that Tana French's attempt to write about ghost estates in Broken Harborwas feeble, with a ridiculous premise, as well as being very insulting with stereotypes of working class families. I haven't read French again (and won't). On the other hand O'Callahan displays a deft touch with this topic and weaves a haunting story.
August 3, 2016
A heatwave. A near abandoned housing estate. A hot, heady, clammy evening in August. A knock on a door.
Our narrator tells the story - the one that began that fateful evening when the girl knocked on his door. Dirty, unkempt, covered in writing and proclaiming that her dad had gone missing - we hear her story.
I really don't know how to review this without giving anything away, because I think this is the type of book that is best read blind - I'm not entirely sure I could do the plot justice. There's also the added problem of not knowing whether or not our narrator is being entirely honest with us or with himself.
This was genuinely quite scary in parts - not because of the story, but because of the atmosphere created by the author. It left me with more questions than anything, but it's a real page turner and one that will be discussed in many a book club this year.
An accomplished debut, one that will stay with me.
Our narrator tells the story - the one that began that fateful evening when the girl knocked on his door. Dirty, unkempt, covered in writing and proclaiming that her dad had gone missing - we hear her story.
I really don't know how to review this without giving anything away, because I think this is the type of book that is best read blind - I'm not entirely sure I could do the plot justice. There's also the added problem of not knowing whether or not our narrator is being entirely honest with us or with himself.
This was genuinely quite scary in parts - not because of the story, but because of the atmosphere created by the author. It left me with more questions than anything, but it's a real page turner and one that will be discussed in many a book club this year.
An accomplished debut, one that will stay with me.
April 23, 2017
Nothing on Earth opens with a twelve-year-old girl hammering on the door of a priest – the narrator. She is malnourished, dishevelled, filthy, and her skin is covered in words written in blue biro. He lets her in, and she tells him a story: the story of her family's disappearance. That story is retold by the narrator, followed by his own explanation of how he has come to be 'at the centre of a story that should never have been mine'.
The girl has been living with her parents, Helen and Paul, and her aunt, Helen's sister Martina. The family is locally notorious: because something happened to Helen and Martina's parents (we never discover what, and this is just one of many peculiarities); because the whole family lived abroad for a number of years before returning to their hometown; because of where they now live. Like Tana French's Broken Harbour, O'Callaghan's novel makes use of a half-finished 'ghost estate' as its setting. Apart from a young man who lives in a caravan and acts as estate security, the family are the only residents, living in what's supposed to be a show home, making do with flimsy temporary furniture. A family from the Midlands will be moving in soon, says the estate agent, but they never do. A heatwave comes; Martina and Paul lose their jobs. And then Helen disappears.
Right from the start, it's clear we're in classic unreliable narrator territory here – doubly so, since much of what the narrator relates was ostensibly told to him by the girl. Throughout the story, the narrator hints at ways in which his story has been misinterpreted after the fact. But he also describes scenes and private thoughts neither he nor the girl can possibly have been party to.
There are two major undercurrents in this story. The first is a constant low-level suggestion of something weird, exemplified by the inexplicable disappearance of the girl's family, bizarre secondary characters whose very existence seems questionable, and details like the words 'so be it' appearing out of nowhere, written in the dust on the windows. The second is the narrator's uncomfortable awareness that he may be suspected of inappropriate behaviour in his conduct with the girl, particularly in allowing her to stay at his house. He is all-too-aware of stereotypes about priests and children, and takes steps to ensure their contact is minimised, for example refusing her pleas to sleep in his room despite her distraught state. Yet late in the book, he admits to having fantasies about her. What's more, the way in which he justifies this is alarmingly blunt, going completely against his previous reserve:
If I'm guilty of anything else, I'm guilty of that. I'm guilty of thinking about the girl in bed in the room across from my own. I am a man as well, after all. She was twelve, or so they said. But even then I wondered if she might have been more than that. She was as pitiful as she was pretty, and she was pretty in spades. There was something about that combination, at my mercy, that I could not help imagining.
When I was thinking back over the book in light of its ending, I remembered I'd blanched at the first couple of pages because of the narrator's exhaustive description of the girl's body, including her 'emerald' eyes and 'barely pronounced breasts'. Then I began to realise just how many hints are woven into the text. There's a scene in which he describes embarrassment at being told, by his cleaner, that the girl is on her period – possibly genuine; also possibly a pre-emptive defence of the blood later found on the bed she slept in. When he claims to hear her screaming from his bedroom, and doesn't go out to help her or find out what's happening – is he in his room, or is that just where he's placed himself in his memory, unable to admit the truth? He's asked to explain a visit made to the family's house during which he spied on Martina and the girl sunbathing topless; he tells the reader he was 'soft on' Martina, despite never having met her, yet tellingly says he could have stared at 'them', not her, for hours. It's fitting that the title comes from a phrase the narrator uses to describe the girl, one it is difficult to read without inferring a wistful tone: 'she was like nothing on earth'.
Those two strands, the implicit weirdness and the suggestions of sexual misconduct, are brought together with a suggestion/accusation made by Curtin, the chief detective assigned to the case: that 'there never was any girl'. The jury's out on whether this really works: it's the sort of 'wait, what?' maybe-twist that makes you want to go back and reread everything that came before it, though it remains as one possible theory rather than an actual explanation of the story. (I have to admit that I found it baffling to the point that it almost made the whole story come unstuck for me. If 'the girl' wasn't who she's portrayed to be, what are we to make of all the incriminating details in the narrator's account? Why would his story take this form?)
A profoundly unsettling book in more ways than one, Nothing on Earth is one of those very short novels – easy to read in its entirety in a couple of hours – that leaves you with weeks' worth of material to pick over. I don't really know how I feel about it, but it certainly got under my skin.
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The girl has been living with her parents, Helen and Paul, and her aunt, Helen's sister Martina. The family is locally notorious: because something happened to Helen and Martina's parents (we never discover what, and this is just one of many peculiarities); because the whole family lived abroad for a number of years before returning to their hometown; because of where they now live. Like Tana French's Broken Harbour, O'Callaghan's novel makes use of a half-finished 'ghost estate' as its setting. Apart from a young man who lives in a caravan and acts as estate security, the family are the only residents, living in what's supposed to be a show home, making do with flimsy temporary furniture. A family from the Midlands will be moving in soon, says the estate agent, but they never do. A heatwave comes; Martina and Paul lose their jobs. And then Helen disappears.
Right from the start, it's clear we're in classic unreliable narrator territory here – doubly so, since much of what the narrator relates was ostensibly told to him by the girl. Throughout the story, the narrator hints at ways in which his story has been misinterpreted after the fact. But he also describes scenes and private thoughts neither he nor the girl can possibly have been party to.
There are two major undercurrents in this story. The first is a constant low-level suggestion of something weird, exemplified by the inexplicable disappearance of the girl's family, bizarre secondary characters whose very existence seems questionable, and details like the words 'so be it' appearing out of nowhere, written in the dust on the windows. The second is the narrator's uncomfortable awareness that he may be suspected of inappropriate behaviour in his conduct with the girl, particularly in allowing her to stay at his house. He is all-too-aware of stereotypes about priests and children, and takes steps to ensure their contact is minimised, for example refusing her pleas to sleep in his room despite her distraught state. Yet late in the book, he admits to having fantasies about her. What's more, the way in which he justifies this is alarmingly blunt, going completely against his previous reserve:
If I'm guilty of anything else, I'm guilty of that. I'm guilty of thinking about the girl in bed in the room across from my own. I am a man as well, after all. She was twelve, or so they said. But even then I wondered if she might have been more than that. She was as pitiful as she was pretty, and she was pretty in spades. There was something about that combination, at my mercy, that I could not help imagining.
When I was thinking back over the book in light of its ending, I remembered I'd blanched at the first couple of pages because of the narrator's exhaustive description of the girl's body, including her 'emerald' eyes and 'barely pronounced breasts'. Then I began to realise just how many hints are woven into the text. There's a scene in which he describes embarrassment at being told, by his cleaner, that the girl is on her period – possibly genuine; also possibly a pre-emptive defence of the blood later found on the bed she slept in. When he claims to hear her screaming from his bedroom, and doesn't go out to help her or find out what's happening – is he in his room, or is that just where he's placed himself in his memory, unable to admit the truth? He's asked to explain a visit made to the family's house during which he spied on Martina and the girl sunbathing topless; he tells the reader he was 'soft on' Martina, despite never having met her, yet tellingly says he could have stared at 'them', not her, for hours. It's fitting that the title comes from a phrase the narrator uses to describe the girl, one it is difficult to read without inferring a wistful tone: 'she was like nothing on earth'.
Those two strands, the implicit weirdness and the suggestions of sexual misconduct, are brought together with a suggestion/accusation made by Curtin, the chief detective assigned to the case: that 'there never was any girl'. The jury's out on whether this really works: it's the sort of 'wait, what?' maybe-twist that makes you want to go back and reread everything that came before it, though it remains as one possible theory rather than an actual explanation of the story. (I have to admit that I found it baffling to the point that it almost made the whole story come unstuck for me. If 'the girl' wasn't who she's portrayed to be, what are we to make of all the incriminating details in the narrator's account? Why would his story take this form?)
A profoundly unsettling book in more ways than one, Nothing on Earth is one of those very short novels – easy to read in its entirety in a couple of hours – that leaves you with weeks' worth of material to pick over. I don't really know how I feel about it, but it certainly got under my skin.
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May 27, 2017
The narrator's authoritative and unreliable voice was already determined for me, having attended Conor O'Callaghan's mesmeric reading of Ch 5 at Galway's Cuirt festival earlier this year. Is there a new 'Irish Gothic', centred on that peculiar limbo of the ghost estate? If so, this strange novel looks set to be one of its key texts.
December 29, 2022
There was something of The Cement Garden about this book. The intensely hot summer with nothing to do but lay around in the garden, parents disappearing, the sexual tension as oppressive as the heat. It is set on a new housing estate that the Irish were so keen on building during their EU honeymoon but which remained empty and left the suburbs of Dublin eerily deserted like a Wimpey Mary Celeste and has a cast of characters that would be at home in a David Lynch film. Like in his films they tend to be recurrent motifs rather than fully fledged people.
There is the estate manager whose role is to periodically pop up to tell the family the others will be arriving soon, the night security guard who remains a shadowy figure but who is visited nightly by one of the women in a repeated ritual. Of course, being Ireland, we need religion to percolate through proceedings and predictably the Catholic priest is a shady character who narrates the beginning and end of the tale. His story is not completely credible but equally the alternative is even less so but his is the only explanation of some of the events (incomplete as they are).
This is not a book for you if you don’t like David Lynch films, if you don’t like not having events referenced repeatedly not being explained, if you don’t like finishing a book and still wondering what actually happened. This is a book where the pleasure is found in the writing, in the mystery, in the journey rather than the conclusion and so if you can cope with your reading matter mirroring life with its unanswered questions then invest your time in this gem.
There is the estate manager whose role is to periodically pop up to tell the family the others will be arriving soon, the night security guard who remains a shadowy figure but who is visited nightly by one of the women in a repeated ritual. Of course, being Ireland, we need religion to percolate through proceedings and predictably the Catholic priest is a shady character who narrates the beginning and end of the tale. His story is not completely credible but equally the alternative is even less so but his is the only explanation of some of the events (incomplete as they are).
This is not a book for you if you don’t like David Lynch films, if you don’t like not having events referenced repeatedly not being explained, if you don’t like finishing a book and still wondering what actually happened. This is a book where the pleasure is found in the writing, in the mystery, in the journey rather than the conclusion and so if you can cope with your reading matter mirroring life with its unanswered questions then invest your time in this gem.
September 22, 2018
”After a certain age, a man has to work hard to look trustworthy. That’s even truer in this vocation.”
It is rare that I am left both disturbed and perplexed by a book. In Nothing on Earth, the debut novel by Irish poet Conor O’Callaghan, an atmosphere of dread is conjured in the opening pages when a filthy, malnourished 12-year-old girls bangs loudly on the door of an Irish priest. She has ran to the priest’s house from her own, a show home on an abandoned and isolated ghost estate on the outskirts of an unnamed town. She is breathless and sweaty and when the priest invites her in, he notices her revealing, dirty clothes, her emerald green eyes, her “barely pronounced breasts” and the strange words scrawled on her skin in blue ink.
The girl tells the priest about her family: her young father and mother, recently returned to Ireland from “over beyond”; and her aunt, her mother’s twin sister. Oddly, all three have recently disappeared without a trance in separate instances. Added to this, the priest already knows things about the family. The whole town does. Something tragic happened the twin sisters’ parents but we never learn what. And the strangeness doesn’t end there. There are accounts in the story of things that happened in that house on the ghost estate: strange noises at night, doors slamming, words written backwards on windows; everything about the house and the family that lived in it invokes a quiet terror.
The priest calls the authorities shortly after the girl arrives, and he tells us they come and speak to her. When they bring the girl home and verify that her house is, in fact, empty, they return her to the priests house for the night and begin enquiries on the whereabouts of her family.
O’Callaghan uses the technique of the unreliable narrator very effectively here. Our narrator is recounting both his memories of events and the girl’s story, as told to him by her. When things take another disturbing turn, we begin to question if the priest is telling the truth, or if his story is a conjuring or imagining of events to mask something darker. The whole situation plays with the mind and the effect is both unnerving and seductive. There are a lot of things that are unclear here: stories are rewritten, identities slip and slide, and the young girl and the circumstances surrounding her family have an otherworldly menace that is truly chilling. A lot of this story is left open to interpretation, including the many hints that there is something of a sexual nature to the priest’s fascination with the girl. What you choose to take from it, is up to you.
With a strange but intriguing story and some beautiful writing, Nothing on Earth is a quick and elusive read that will completely absorb you and disturb you.
It is rare that I am left both disturbed and perplexed by a book. In Nothing on Earth, the debut novel by Irish poet Conor O’Callaghan, an atmosphere of dread is conjured in the opening pages when a filthy, malnourished 12-year-old girls bangs loudly on the door of an Irish priest. She has ran to the priest’s house from her own, a show home on an abandoned and isolated ghost estate on the outskirts of an unnamed town. She is breathless and sweaty and when the priest invites her in, he notices her revealing, dirty clothes, her emerald green eyes, her “barely pronounced breasts” and the strange words scrawled on her skin in blue ink.
The girl tells the priest about her family: her young father and mother, recently returned to Ireland from “over beyond”; and her aunt, her mother’s twin sister. Oddly, all three have recently disappeared without a trance in separate instances. Added to this, the priest already knows things about the family. The whole town does. Something tragic happened the twin sisters’ parents but we never learn what. And the strangeness doesn’t end there. There are accounts in the story of things that happened in that house on the ghost estate: strange noises at night, doors slamming, words written backwards on windows; everything about the house and the family that lived in it invokes a quiet terror.
The priest calls the authorities shortly after the girl arrives, and he tells us they come and speak to her. When they bring the girl home and verify that her house is, in fact, empty, they return her to the priests house for the night and begin enquiries on the whereabouts of her family.
O’Callaghan uses the technique of the unreliable narrator very effectively here. Our narrator is recounting both his memories of events and the girl’s story, as told to him by her. When things take another disturbing turn, we begin to question if the priest is telling the truth, or if his story is a conjuring or imagining of events to mask something darker. The whole situation plays with the mind and the effect is both unnerving and seductive. There are a lot of things that are unclear here: stories are rewritten, identities slip and slide, and the young girl and the circumstances surrounding her family have an otherworldly menace that is truly chilling. A lot of this story is left open to interpretation, including the many hints that there is something of a sexual nature to the priest’s fascination with the girl. What you choose to take from it, is up to you.
With a strange but intriguing story and some beautiful writing, Nothing on Earth is a quick and elusive read that will completely absorb you and disturb you.
February 8, 2017
Oddly, and not by design, this is the second book in a row that I've read which centers on the disappearance of a person/persons without much of a resolution (Infinite Ground being the last one). It is well done for what it is, and some of the prose itself is terrific, just expecting a bit more.
January 24, 2018
Brilliantly sustained, deeply unnerving, garnished with treacly black doses of Lynchian humour - a razor-sharp debut that will leave most readers eagerly awaiting O'Callaghan's sophomore novel.
July 13, 2020
This took me a while to get into between one thing and another so apologies if this is a bit disjointed. Have tried as much as possible not to include spoilers but if you’re planning on reading it – look away now anyway.
I felt like I would be doing someone (the author? the narrator?) a disservice to simply assume the potential unreliability of the narrator once I figured out *what* he was – but it happened anyway. I couldn’t, or didn’t, fault his story to that point and only then began to wonder whether I should be questioning him. Why was I judging him now? It struck me that this was something we were encouraged to ask ourselves, and therefore we should question preconceptions we have about people and our judgemental natures in general also.
Therefore, I could look at it like this: rather than simply being a ghost story or a tale of post tiger economy Ireland, this is a book of judgement; everyone is doing it to everyone else and we as readers are very skilfully drawn into this net by the author. His use of the ordinary throughout the novel (apart from the scorching hot weather which I found ludicrous for summer in Ireland, so as to have made me uncomfortable) is a useful device as it allows the reader engage fully with the characters and setting without thinking about it. Also, I didn’t take the ghostly sounds as literal ghosts. The knocking and sounds for me were the hollow empty sounds of a ghost estate heightened by the knowledge that shells of empty houses surround the family. Hollowness compounded by empty days, due to lack of work and vacant lives. All resulting in a feeling of despair and, yes dread. The author provides us everything we need for a tale of a modern judgemental, harsh Ireland that maybe fails to see those most in need, and turns its back on them when they cry for help. Whoever they are.
Personally, I am always interested in the ‘whys’ of book names – especially where it’s not obvious to me at first. Towards the middle/end of the novel I started to make links with what the narrator said and how he spoke, and the ways I could link this to the title, which I found enjoyable as this threw forth many different connotations for me. That’s probably one of the most perplexing things for me about this book – it has made my head swim. I can say, yeah, judgemental, preconception ridden Ireland; thats what it’s about. Aaaand from another look at the book I could strike that, and come up with something completely different several times over and probably contradict myself to boot each time. Congrats Rick O’Shea for this bookclub selection – you have officially fried what was left of my brain!
I felt like I would be doing someone (the author? the narrator?) a disservice to simply assume the potential unreliability of the narrator once I figured out *what* he was – but it happened anyway. I couldn’t, or didn’t, fault his story to that point and only then began to wonder whether I should be questioning him. Why was I judging him now? It struck me that this was something we were encouraged to ask ourselves, and therefore we should question preconceptions we have about people and our judgemental natures in general also.
Therefore, I could look at it like this: rather than simply being a ghost story or a tale of post tiger economy Ireland, this is a book of judgement; everyone is doing it to everyone else and we as readers are very skilfully drawn into this net by the author. His use of the ordinary throughout the novel (apart from the scorching hot weather which I found ludicrous for summer in Ireland, so as to have made me uncomfortable) is a useful device as it allows the reader engage fully with the characters and setting without thinking about it. Also, I didn’t take the ghostly sounds as literal ghosts. The knocking and sounds for me were the hollow empty sounds of a ghost estate heightened by the knowledge that shells of empty houses surround the family. Hollowness compounded by empty days, due to lack of work and vacant lives. All resulting in a feeling of despair and, yes dread. The author provides us everything we need for a tale of a modern judgemental, harsh Ireland that maybe fails to see those most in need, and turns its back on them when they cry for help. Whoever they are.
Personally, I am always interested in the ‘whys’ of book names – especially where it’s not obvious to me at first. Towards the middle/end of the novel I started to make links with what the narrator said and how he spoke, and the ways I could link this to the title, which I found enjoyable as this threw forth many different connotations for me. That’s probably one of the most perplexing things for me about this book – it has made my head swim. I can say, yeah, judgemental, preconception ridden Ireland; thats what it’s about. Aaaand from another look at the book I could strike that, and come up with something completely different several times over and probably contradict myself to boot each time. Congrats Rick O’Shea for this bookclub selection – you have officially fried what was left of my brain!
January 6, 2018
This is a wonderful debut novel set in a rural Irish village that is full of mystery and yet doesn’t really have a ‘genre’ label.
As the story progresses, especially the last quarter, more and more is revealed and yet for some, at its conclusion there will be more questions than answers.
A terrified and disheveled twelve year old girl knocks on her neighbours door and relates how her family have disappeared. They have been living for some months is the show house of a new estate on a Close at the edge of the village.
The writing is dark and compelling, and quite different to anything I’ve read before. O’Callaghan manages to create an air of oddness about the few main characters, so much so that the reader never is quite sure of what is going on. There is suspicion about everything, not least what to make of the narrator.
This is a very strong debut, sinister and chilling, and yet completely enthralling.
As the story progresses, especially the last quarter, more and more is revealed and yet for some, at its conclusion there will be more questions than answers.
A terrified and disheveled twelve year old girl knocks on her neighbours door and relates how her family have disappeared. They have been living for some months is the show house of a new estate on a Close at the edge of the village.
The writing is dark and compelling, and quite different to anything I’ve read before. O’Callaghan manages to create an air of oddness about the few main characters, so much so that the reader never is quite sure of what is going on. There is suspicion about everything, not least what to make of the narrator.
This is a very strong debut, sinister and chilling, and yet completely enthralling.
June 21, 2016
It's a promising first novel but I wish we'd learn more about what happened even if it's not really the purpose of the book. Still it was very thrilling and I read it almost entirely in one sitting.
March 19, 2020
4,5/5
Fascinant, mystérieux, et conté d’une écriture sublime.
Fascinant, mystérieux, et conté d’une écriture sublime.
December 10, 2022
How do you give a book five stars that you are still not sure what happened? Well… I just did and, like this book, it is unexplainable.
Irish author Conor O’Callaghan has an incredible ability to create a disturbing atmosphere that will generate more questions than answers. All I know is that I could not put down this eerily compelling book.
The mystery begins with this epigraph:
“If any man lie with a woman in her flowers and uncover her nakedness, and she open the fountain of her blood, both shall be destroyed out of the midst of their people. Leviticus 20:18”
The story starts with a 12-year-old girl whose mother and aunt have already gone missing and is now knocking at the door of a neighbor, who is a priest by the way, asking if he had seen her father. Where has everyone gone? I can’t tell you.
There are lots of unexplained noises and happenings and a dinner scene that is creepy as all get out. Definitely more David Lynch than Stephen King in tone, strange occurrences and incongruencies will make you feel like you have entered an episode of Twin Peaks.
If you are part of a creative writing group or better yet you have a book group of people who enjoy thinking out of the box, then this is the book for you but for people who like a linear plot that neatly ties up loose ends, you might want to skip this. For me, this is great stuff by an author I will continue to read.
Irish author Conor O’Callaghan has an incredible ability to create a disturbing atmosphere that will generate more questions than answers. All I know is that I could not put down this eerily compelling book.
The mystery begins with this epigraph:
“If any man lie with a woman in her flowers and uncover her nakedness, and she open the fountain of her blood, both shall be destroyed out of the midst of their people. Leviticus 20:18”
The story starts with a 12-year-old girl whose mother and aunt have already gone missing and is now knocking at the door of a neighbor, who is a priest by the way, asking if he had seen her father. Where has everyone gone? I can’t tell you.
There are lots of unexplained noises and happenings and a dinner scene that is creepy as all get out. Definitely more David Lynch than Stephen King in tone, strange occurrences and incongruencies will make you feel like you have entered an episode of Twin Peaks.
If you are part of a creative writing group or better yet you have a book group of people who enjoy thinking out of the box, then this is the book for you but for people who like a linear plot that neatly ties up loose ends, you might want to skip this. For me, this is great stuff by an author I will continue to read.
June 29, 2016
Where to begin? This is, as I would expect, exceptionally well-written. And it is a story that both grips and teases in equally measure. It is so hard to describe. The act of reading it is like getting the tips of your fingers onto something you desperately want but not being quite able to gain enough purchase to retrieve it. Some reviewers have said they wanted to know more - I understand that but that's the point. And that's the beauty of the thing. Conor's poetry shines through from the beginning to the end, rich with description. 'It had a texture, her skin, of the pure fine suede of a peach.' It is so easy to read and such a joy. It leaves you feeling shocked and disturbed and yes, you are hungry for more, but it gives you more than enough to find your own conclusions. Read it in one sitting. Read it all the way through, then go to the beginning and read the first nine pages again. There's every chance you'll carry on. There is a reality within these pages that refuses to be ignored.
July 26, 2017
Können Leute spurlos verschwinden? Sind wir unseren Mitmenschen so fremd, dass wir uns nicht mal über deren Existenz sicher sein können? Spielen unsere Erinnerungen uns selber böse Streiche? Nach der Lektüre von "Nothing On Earth", dem Debüt von Conor O'Callaghan stellt man sich automatisch solche Fragen. Denn der kurze aber atmosphärisch sehr dichte Roman gibt sich nicht nur von der ersten Seite an mysteriös, sondern entfaltet mit jedem Kapitel mehr Unsicherheiten und Fallen.
Als Leser wird man sehr schnell in den Sog der Rätsel und der unheimlichen Geschehnisse gezogen und kann sich nicht mehr vom Geschriebenen abwenden. O'Callaghan ist mit "Nothing On Earth" somit nicht nur ein gutes Buch gelungen, sondern auch eine schwebende Geschichte, die man nie ganz zu erfassen glaubt und genügend Fragen aufwirft, die auch ohne klare Antwort aufregend und spannend sind. Und dass der Autor dabei nie in Klischees oder plumpe Situationen verfällt ist ihm hoch anzurechnen.
Die irische Menschlichkeit ohne den Menschen - ein Unterschied?
Als Leser wird man sehr schnell in den Sog der Rätsel und der unheimlichen Geschehnisse gezogen und kann sich nicht mehr vom Geschriebenen abwenden. O'Callaghan ist mit "Nothing On Earth" somit nicht nur ein gutes Buch gelungen, sondern auch eine schwebende Geschichte, die man nie ganz zu erfassen glaubt und genügend Fragen aufwirft, die auch ohne klare Antwort aufregend und spannend sind. Und dass der Autor dabei nie in Klischees oder plumpe Situationen verfällt ist ihm hoch anzurechnen.
Die irische Menschlichkeit ohne den Menschen - ein Unterschied?
November 19, 2017
I think Conor O'Callaghan has a great style of writing, and there is some impressive work here, but I think it is falling into the same issue that SO MANY new authors are indulging - and which publishers (and so, I guess, readers) are allowing. So, there was a lot to admire, but the nature of these kinds of ending are really getting on my nerves!
December 29, 2018
This my very first novel by this new author is in my opinion an amazing little book.
Story-telling is of a wonderful quality, because the delivers this tale in a most compelling fashion and all the characters come surprisingly vividly to life within this fascinating thrilling story.
The story itself is very gripping for it will keep you spellbound until the very end with its frightening passages which will take you along on this horror road of madness.
This tale is a refreshing, ominous and fearful psychological thriller that keeps you on the edge with its extraordinary and strangely beautiful terrifying scenes, but this small tale is also supernatural and ghostly and brought to us with great emphasis and conviction.
Highly recommended, for this little book is "A Formidable Psychological Tale"!
Story-telling is of a wonderful quality, because the delivers this tale in a most compelling fashion and all the characters come surprisingly vividly to life within this fascinating thrilling story.
The story itself is very gripping for it will keep you spellbound until the very end with its frightening passages which will take you along on this horror road of madness.
This tale is a refreshing, ominous and fearful psychological thriller that keeps you on the edge with its extraordinary and strangely beautiful terrifying scenes, but this small tale is also supernatural and ghostly and brought to us with great emphasis and conviction.
Highly recommended, for this little book is "A Formidable Psychological Tale"!
March 6, 2021
Nothing on Earth opens with a scared, disheveled girl pounding on the door of a house, saying that her father has disappeared. From there the story wanders back and forth - in essence, the girl's family has been staying in an abandoned home in a subdivision that never actually developed. The family has some kind of tie to the area through the girl's mother and aunt who had left the area after something happened to their parents. For much of the book, you aren't sure what is true and what is not. This is a slow burn of a novel with moments that should seem fine but still seem somewhat sinister. If you are looking for a book with a neat ending, this isn't the read for you. If you enjoy a dark atmosphere, slowly building tension, and like a book that leaves you a little uncertain about what you just read, pick this one up.
January 29, 2017
A good mystery shows a myriad of details, but still keeps you guessing. O’Callaghan’s novel doesn’t understand this.
It’s easy to keep the mood mysterious and spooky if the author deliberate sets us up to be out of the loop. Whatever is going on in this plot is interesting, but I’m only given bits and pieces, flashes of events, and so … well, it’s all a bit of a waste in the end.
I wanted to be amazed. But the fractured story only leaves me frustrated.
It’s easy to keep the mood mysterious and spooky if the author deliberate sets us up to be out of the loop. Whatever is going on in this plot is interesting, but I’m only given bits and pieces, flashes of events, and so … well, it’s all a bit of a waste in the end.
I wanted to be amazed. But the fractured story only leaves me frustrated.
June 28, 2016
I found this eerily disturbing. If you don't mind not finding out the answers to a story then you will not be a bit frustrated as I was at the ending. Haven't read anything quite like this before, it was strange.
December 26, 2016
This one stays with you.
August 21, 2020
4.5
Reading this slight novel was like watching a true crime doco but only ever hearing the testimony of the accused: no facts ever interjected, no trustworthy source to narrate between the lines, just defence.
Our narrator is adamant that he is of the reliable sort, but admits to fabrications without being specific. If he’s reliable, this is an eerie tale: one of an entire missing family and creepy notes on dusty windows and characters who may or not truly exist. If he’s unreliable, it’s even eerier: because he maybe killed any number of those family members, and there are characters who may or not truly exist; because of course, he’s telling the story, so any mention of the girl having her period (which later explains the blood on his bed) could have been added into his account as a premeditated explanation, as could be his hearing her screaming in the night (to cover up in case someone nearby heard the same thing coming from his home?)
Our narrator is a priest. One who’s well aware of the suspicion that could come against him should he be left alone with a minor. He’s also a perv. One whose admitted to watching said minor topless from afar and fantasising about her in the other room.
It’s the kind of book where you should turn the final page and start all over again with your knowledge of how it ends and start picking through the story with a fine toothed comb, finding hints and subtleties you couldn’t possibly notice the first time round without all the information. I’m very keen to come back to this in future and do just that.
Reading this slight novel was like watching a true crime doco but only ever hearing the testimony of the accused: no facts ever interjected, no trustworthy source to narrate between the lines, just defence.
Our narrator is adamant that he is of the reliable sort, but admits to fabrications without being specific. If he’s reliable, this is an eerie tale: one of an entire missing family and creepy notes on dusty windows and characters who may or not truly exist. If he’s unreliable, it’s even eerier: because he maybe killed any number of those family members, and there are characters who may or not truly exist; because of course, he’s telling the story, so any mention of the girl having her period (which later explains the blood on his bed) could have been added into his account as a premeditated explanation, as could be his hearing her screaming in the night (to cover up in case someone nearby heard the same thing coming from his home?)
Our narrator is a priest. One who’s well aware of the suspicion that could come against him should he be left alone with a minor. He’s also a perv. One whose admitted to watching said minor topless from afar and fantasising about her in the other room.
It’s the kind of book where you should turn the final page and start all over again with your knowledge of how it ends and start picking through the story with a fine toothed comb, finding hints and subtleties you couldn’t possibly notice the first time round without all the information. I’m very keen to come back to this in future and do just that.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 29, 2017
This was a different reading experience from 99% of the literature I consume. O'Callaghan's writing reads with a brogue. It took me about 50 pages to find the cadence and to figure clearly what is happening in this story. There are a lot of culture specific plot components which required a little internet assist. But I found that once I discovered the rhythm of the writing and the direction of the story I enjoyed the read a great deal. Shout-out to @kasacotugno for sharing the book with me. "Maybe what has happened to me, and keeps on happening, is merely something that happens to all of us with age. The world depopulates. Gradually our loved ones stop answering. Where has my brother gone? Where does everyone go?" (p. 173) That's for real, for real.
April 5, 2020
Avevo la sensazione di nuotare in un mare di melassa durante la lettura, mi ha tolto il respiro..
Disturbante e angosciante, ma wow!
Around the world in 52 books A book witg a "-ing" word in the title
Disturbante e angosciante, ma wow!
Around the world in 52 books A book witg a "-ing" word in the title
April 29, 2023
i felt no sense of resolution at the end, and while that could be argued to be the point (perhaps what we thought happened didn’t), what i ended up feeling like was that perhaps all the reflections were just pointless
July 19, 2022
Chilling
March 21, 2024
Holy shit. Post Celtic tiger ghost houses plus classic gothic is the modern horror I needed. Novels by poets are always chefs kiss but this book has an efficacy of language that may be unmatched
February 5, 2018
Nothing on Earth by Conor O’Callaghan, is the kind of book that once you have read it, that 'lingers.'
Opening with a narrator, who you quickly realise, may not be as reliable as you thought. He awkwardly begins by trying to explain,
‘One the other side of a doorstep, in the middle of nowhere, stood a story everybody already knew.’
The 'story' is a half-naked pre-pubescent, ‘a girl of twelve or thereabouts,' who has turned up and knocked on his door. He then goes into great detail, perhaps too much, to describe what the girl was and was not wearing, More shockingly, he then describes that she is covered in,
‘…words scrawled around her skin, dozens in blue, frayed at the edges… the more intact were like little darns meant to mend those points where the fabric of her flesh had worn threadbare.'
Reminiscent, of Peter Greenway’s 1996 film The Pillow Book, the girl on the doorstep, her innocence, her future and her past are secured within the written word. And so, the 'Word' becomes flesh. The girl is O'Callaghan's Logos.
As you read the story, you are reminded of Plato's cave; chained to the page, unable to turn your head, all you can see are shadows and all you can hear is the echo of the narrator's insalubrious voice.
‘I have done nothing...I hadn't laid a finger on her.’
And as Plato suggested, all is not always what it seems.
Disturbing and strange, the novel is an assortment of horror, fiction, the fantastic and mundane. It's a physiological family drama set within a dystopian and apocalyptic landscape, infused with a number of conventions and elements of the Gothic novel, though this is something that the author denied was his intent. [Sheffield Hallam University, October 2017] Yet there is a sense of uneasiness about it all. The unreliable narrator, who is both an outsider and anti-hero, a Damsel in Distress, a Femme Fatal, doors that bang when no one is there, faces in the windows, and shadows that move across the almost derelict estate and gardens .
Throughout the novel identity slips and shifts; the two sisters are mistaken for each other. Interchangeable names and relationships shimmer like a mirage in the heat; it’s the ‘hottest August’ in living memory and it's 'hell on earth.’ It's a story of absence and disappearance injected with the incompleteness of buildings and hollow homes, making everything feel just that out of focus.
Belief or lack of belief hovers like an unscrupulous odour, throughout the unremitting evaporation of characters. One minute they are there and then the next minute gone. Where will it all end?
O'Callaghan reminiscent of the unreliable narrator, in a discussion with MA students at Sheffield Hallam University, with a glint in his eyes, smiles knowingly, yet gives very little away. He is reluctant to divulge what the book is ‘about.’ The only clue is in the solitary place name found within the whole of the novel, ‘Read...ing.’ He goes on to state that he did give the novel an ending; it just may not be the one that we, the reader, may want or expect.
On the last page, the narrator tells us, ‘I pray that I might forget. Or failing that, I may at least remember what forgetting feels like... I see her as she appeared on my step, not as she might be now. An Owl Shrieks above…’
O'Callaghan, is also a poet, and is clearly aware of the argument that poets and philosophy, from Socrates, in Plato's Republic, to Coleridge, Kierkegaard, Jollimore, Koethe, and Brooke J Sandler are interchangeable. So it is no surprise that the novel, after beginning with Plato's cave, ends with a nod to Hegel and his 'Owl of Minerva. '
‘In the end all things will become known.’
But will they?
To understand the novel, you may have to [go to] read[ing] and perceive, then perhaps put it down, walk away, come back and read it again.
Opening with a narrator, who you quickly realise, may not be as reliable as you thought. He awkwardly begins by trying to explain,
‘One the other side of a doorstep, in the middle of nowhere, stood a story everybody already knew.’
The 'story' is a half-naked pre-pubescent, ‘a girl of twelve or thereabouts,' who has turned up and knocked on his door. He then goes into great detail, perhaps too much, to describe what the girl was and was not wearing, More shockingly, he then describes that she is covered in,
‘…words scrawled around her skin, dozens in blue, frayed at the edges… the more intact were like little darns meant to mend those points where the fabric of her flesh had worn threadbare.'
Reminiscent, of Peter Greenway’s 1996 film The Pillow Book, the girl on the doorstep, her innocence, her future and her past are secured within the written word. And so, the 'Word' becomes flesh. The girl is O'Callaghan's Logos.
As you read the story, you are reminded of Plato's cave; chained to the page, unable to turn your head, all you can see are shadows and all you can hear is the echo of the narrator's insalubrious voice.
‘I have done nothing...I hadn't laid a finger on her.’
And as Plato suggested, all is not always what it seems.
Disturbing and strange, the novel is an assortment of horror, fiction, the fantastic and mundane. It's a physiological family drama set within a dystopian and apocalyptic landscape, infused with a number of conventions and elements of the Gothic novel, though this is something that the author denied was his intent. [Sheffield Hallam University, October 2017] Yet there is a sense of uneasiness about it all. The unreliable narrator, who is both an outsider and anti-hero, a Damsel in Distress, a Femme Fatal, doors that bang when no one is there, faces in the windows, and shadows that move across the almost derelict estate and gardens .
Throughout the novel identity slips and shifts; the two sisters are mistaken for each other. Interchangeable names and relationships shimmer like a mirage in the heat; it’s the ‘hottest August’ in living memory and it's 'hell on earth.’ It's a story of absence and disappearance injected with the incompleteness of buildings and hollow homes, making everything feel just that out of focus.
Belief or lack of belief hovers like an unscrupulous odour, throughout the unremitting evaporation of characters. One minute they are there and then the next minute gone. Where will it all end?
O'Callaghan reminiscent of the unreliable narrator, in a discussion with MA students at Sheffield Hallam University, with a glint in his eyes, smiles knowingly, yet gives very little away. He is reluctant to divulge what the book is ‘about.’ The only clue is in the solitary place name found within the whole of the novel, ‘Read...ing.’ He goes on to state that he did give the novel an ending; it just may not be the one that we, the reader, may want or expect.
On the last page, the narrator tells us, ‘I pray that I might forget. Or failing that, I may at least remember what forgetting feels like... I see her as she appeared on my step, not as she might be now. An Owl Shrieks above…’
O'Callaghan, is also a poet, and is clearly aware of the argument that poets and philosophy, from Socrates, in Plato's Republic, to Coleridge, Kierkegaard, Jollimore, Koethe, and Brooke J Sandler are interchangeable. So it is no surprise that the novel, after beginning with Plato's cave, ends with a nod to Hegel and his 'Owl of Minerva. '
‘In the end all things will become known.’
But will they?
To understand the novel, you may have to [go to] read[ing] and perceive, then perhaps put it down, walk away, come back and read it again.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 100 reviews