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The Parts
Set in present-day Dublin, The Parts interweaves six lives and six narratives. In her mansion in the mountains, millionaire widow Delly Roche is getting ready for death. Keeping her company are her companion of many years, Kitty Flood, and the discreetly insane Dr. George Addison-Blake.
So why is Delly so keen to die? What exactly is in the letter discovered by Kitty? What is Dr. George doing in the shed by the tennis courts? And does any of it have anything to do with the conspiracy theories being hinted at on Joe Kavanaugh's radio show? Down in the city, Barry, Joe's producer, is getting caught up in something and he's not quite sure why. And all the time, conducting business down by the river, doing his best to keep out of this, is Kez.
Something is about to occur.
So why is Delly so keen to die? What exactly is in the letter discovered by Kitty? What is Dr. George doing in the shed by the tennis courts? And does any of it have anything to do with the conspiracy theories being hinted at on Joe Kavanaugh's radio show? Down in the city, Barry, Joe's producer, is getting caught up in something and he's not quite sure why. And all the time, conducting business down by the river, doing his best to keep out of this, is Kez.
Something is about to occur.
- GenresIrish LiteratureFiction
464 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
About the author
Keith Ridgway
23 books124 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.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 5, 2024
Please excuse a slight prelude to my review - Ten reviews since this novel was published in 2003!!! What does this say about our society, culture, world? Look at the absolute rubbish that get hundreds, if not thousands, of reviews! And of the reviews it does get? complaints about the fractured narrative!? Are we living in the 1920's before Elliot's Wasteland, Joyce's Ulysses and Woolf's The Hours? Hasn't multiple narratives entered the cultural psyche everywhere? I think this book is a masterpiece, as well as brilliantly funny, at times, and utterly engrossing. I care so much about it that I am forgoing attempting to write my own review and handing over to Padraic Bohan who wrote the following review in Stinging Fly in March 2003:
"...And now comes The Parts by Keith Ridgway. There is still no escaping the underperforming father (Joe Kavanagh) but this is certainly not central to the novel; this is not his daughter’s story (nor is it primarily Joe’s for that matter).
"The novel is, among other things, a series of fascinating character portraits. The descriptions and dialogue are funny, beautiful, fast-paced and realistic. It would be a wonderful book even if it were no more than this. This is the portrait of a Dublin landlord, for example:
"'His voice – McArdle’s voice – was amazing. It was a flat voice. Which meant, in this case, not only that it was droning and low and dead, but also that it was too small, and it was flaky and falling apart and smelly – that smell which hints at a carcass under the floor. Murder and small rooms, these were features of McArdle’s voice. A nostalgia for the tenements and slum violence. He licked his thumb to count the money. Keys took up as much of his trousers as he did. And he was not thin. He was bursting. [… ] His voice was death beds and boiling, rusted locks and cheap paint, chains and plasterboard partitions and second hand cutlery. […] His striped shirt [… ] looked like greaseproof paper spread over turkey.'
"The time is, I guess, late 1990s or early 2000s (although the warm, balmy summer described made me think of 1995). He’s got the city spot on in its transition years. Joe Kavanagh’s radio career from pirate radio to RTE to independent radio is charted and Ridgway’s light hand pokes fun at many real-life Irish broadcasting careers through independent radio’s various struggles and name changes, its rebranding and time-slot adjustments.
"This is changing Dublin; or the new and different Dublins that the characters live in and are helping to create, adding to the existing or replacing the old ones.
"There’s the Dublin of the rich, of course, and a Dublin of the poor. That’s standard stuff. But there’s more than that. The rich like a multiplicity after all; the poor are wealthy in variation. And then there’s the neither rich nor poor-the getting by, the middle mass, the bulk. Where do they live?
They live in Dublin with the others. A million kittens in a sack, down by the river. […]
How many are there then? Seventeen? Seventy eight? Two?[… ]
"The copper in the cop car waiting by the kerb, dying for a cigarette and missing his wife, he thinks there might be as many as forty. He’s seen some things. Kitty Flood thinks there’s only one, but she’s a complicated woman. Delly Roche doesn’t think about it at all. Dr George Addison-Blake has found sixteen so far, because he knows where to look. Kez thinks there’s thousands.'
"Kez is a rent boy. His story starts at the fringes of the narrative (his narrative sometimes interrupts the others mid-sentence and is distinguished by a different typeface) but he turns out to be the central character. He is also the lyrical chorus of the novel: the narrator’s voice (quoted above) seldom intrudes but when it does, it echoes Kez’s voice.
"Kitty Flood is a gifted writer unable to write except in internet chat rooms due to, it appears, living the good life supported by Delly Roche’s fortune. Delly Roche is the widow of pharmaceutical entrepreneur, Daniel Gilmore. Her health has deteriorated significantly and she is impatiently waiting for death to end it all. Kitty cares for her along with her adopted son, Dr George Addison-Blake. They live together in a mansion in the Dublin mountains.
"Down in the city and its suburbs live Barry, producer, and Joe Kavanagh, broadcaster, both with FMlOl The Real Sound of Dublin. It is not until a thunderclap ending that all the characters are pushed, shoved, or dragged together into one narrative.
"All these characters’ stories begin more or less independently and only progressively intertwine. The writing shifts style and includes bare-knuckle realism, dream sequence, comedy and satire-with letters, memos, emails and text messages interspersed throughout the narrative. The novel starts with the sleeping Kitty flying over Dublin and seeing moments in the lives of the other characters. Kitty never gets to meet Kez although she gets close before the end. None of the characters, in fact, get to see the whole story. Neither do we. Even the very end leaves doubts.
"Yet the book, even its conclusion, is satisfying. It is entirely appropriate that, containing several narratives of fractured perspective, the conclusion does not attempt to patch things up. The final conversation between Kez and Delly Roche, with both sharing a profound and disturbing experience, is conducted at odds, getting close to a single narrative but not converging.
"And here’s the thing: Irish writing in the past has tended to mix brilliant characterisation, comedy and description with a tragic narrative progression. It perhaps was the only possible outcome of such comic excess in the face of Irish reality. The bottom line was that nothing would change. The Irish were doomed to failure, to repeat endlessly and with resignation the same pattern.
"Joyce tells us that to remember everything would be a form of madness. He should know – he represents a literature endlessly documenting our past and repeating that past into the future. With the thriller, however, there is very clearly a before and after: something or someone is discovered or uncovered. We learn something, or the characters learn something that they did not know and, with that, everything changes. But at the end of The Parts, there is the implication that a combination of remembering and forgetting allows Delly and Kez to move on and leave the past behind. In a dramatic and suspense-filled conclusion, the narrative moves into thriller mode and in doing so suggests an Ireland that is capable of renewal, of discovery, of happy endings.
"The novel contains a narrative thread involving the late Daniel Gilmore and how he developed a drug that makes those who take it forget traumatic events. It is said that the drug was used to make the world forget a Third World War fought in the 1950s that the US won. This seems to be a metaphor about memory as a trap, about liberation from the past and starting afresh. Here (as in The Valparaiso Voyage), a thrilling end allows some of the characters to survive and fight another day, gives some of the bad guys their comeuppance and enables the reader to understand something that was until then concealed.
"The characters, like their respective endings, are complex and heterogeneous. Both Kitty and George end up badly; Delly and Joe seem to return to their old lives but with greater understanding; Barry finally establishes contact with the people that surround him. Each is transformed by experiences that have turned their lives upside down and inside out on a roller-coaster Dublin ride that has nothing to do with the paralysis described in Dubliners, for example.
"Kez, as he escapes, joins the others in the standard narrative of the text and appears to have forgotten that his ‘real’ name is Kez. Leaving Dublin, he can also leave behind his alter egos and accept ‘Kevin’ as his real identity (we never discover his surname) much as he accepts the fact that – as his fellow passenger comments – here we are, now, and that is good: no more delusions or flights of fancy.
"Kevin’s father is absent from both the family and the book. Kevin seems to refind himself and a future by leaving Dublin. These are recognisable elements of an Irish narrative. But something is fundamentally different: Dublin has changed and the private woes of its citizens are personal and do not reflect a society in general. There are people, happy and normal. There is Albert, for example, Joe’s neighbour, a Nigerian doctor working in St. James’s Hospital and, it appears, a good father.
"That a writer can so brilliantly and confidently absorb and move on from the canon and standard tropes of Irish writing while still performing the important role of portraying a changing society to itself and to the literary world is a tribute to the talent of Keith Ridgway. That the thriller should become an important device in the toolbox of Irish writers suggests that Irish reality, though already well known and documented, is still capable of surprise and is no longer limited by its past."
"...And now comes The Parts by Keith Ridgway. There is still no escaping the underperforming father (Joe Kavanagh) but this is certainly not central to the novel; this is not his daughter’s story (nor is it primarily Joe’s for that matter).
"The novel is, among other things, a series of fascinating character portraits. The descriptions and dialogue are funny, beautiful, fast-paced and realistic. It would be a wonderful book even if it were no more than this. This is the portrait of a Dublin landlord, for example:
"'His voice – McArdle’s voice – was amazing. It was a flat voice. Which meant, in this case, not only that it was droning and low and dead, but also that it was too small, and it was flaky and falling apart and smelly – that smell which hints at a carcass under the floor. Murder and small rooms, these were features of McArdle’s voice. A nostalgia for the tenements and slum violence. He licked his thumb to count the money. Keys took up as much of his trousers as he did. And he was not thin. He was bursting. [… ] His voice was death beds and boiling, rusted locks and cheap paint, chains and plasterboard partitions and second hand cutlery. […] His striped shirt [… ] looked like greaseproof paper spread over turkey.'
"The time is, I guess, late 1990s or early 2000s (although the warm, balmy summer described made me think of 1995). He’s got the city spot on in its transition years. Joe Kavanagh’s radio career from pirate radio to RTE to independent radio is charted and Ridgway’s light hand pokes fun at many real-life Irish broadcasting careers through independent radio’s various struggles and name changes, its rebranding and time-slot adjustments.
"This is changing Dublin; or the new and different Dublins that the characters live in and are helping to create, adding to the existing or replacing the old ones.
"There’s the Dublin of the rich, of course, and a Dublin of the poor. That’s standard stuff. But there’s more than that. The rich like a multiplicity after all; the poor are wealthy in variation. And then there’s the neither rich nor poor-the getting by, the middle mass, the bulk. Where do they live?
They live in Dublin with the others. A million kittens in a sack, down by the river. […]
How many are there then? Seventeen? Seventy eight? Two?[… ]
"The copper in the cop car waiting by the kerb, dying for a cigarette and missing his wife, he thinks there might be as many as forty. He’s seen some things. Kitty Flood thinks there’s only one, but she’s a complicated woman. Delly Roche doesn’t think about it at all. Dr George Addison-Blake has found sixteen so far, because he knows where to look. Kez thinks there’s thousands.'
"Kez is a rent boy. His story starts at the fringes of the narrative (his narrative sometimes interrupts the others mid-sentence and is distinguished by a different typeface) but he turns out to be the central character. He is also the lyrical chorus of the novel: the narrator’s voice (quoted above) seldom intrudes but when it does, it echoes Kez’s voice.
"Kitty Flood is a gifted writer unable to write except in internet chat rooms due to, it appears, living the good life supported by Delly Roche’s fortune. Delly Roche is the widow of pharmaceutical entrepreneur, Daniel Gilmore. Her health has deteriorated significantly and she is impatiently waiting for death to end it all. Kitty cares for her along with her adopted son, Dr George Addison-Blake. They live together in a mansion in the Dublin mountains.
"Down in the city and its suburbs live Barry, producer, and Joe Kavanagh, broadcaster, both with FMlOl The Real Sound of Dublin. It is not until a thunderclap ending that all the characters are pushed, shoved, or dragged together into one narrative.
"All these characters’ stories begin more or less independently and only progressively intertwine. The writing shifts style and includes bare-knuckle realism, dream sequence, comedy and satire-with letters, memos, emails and text messages interspersed throughout the narrative. The novel starts with the sleeping Kitty flying over Dublin and seeing moments in the lives of the other characters. Kitty never gets to meet Kez although she gets close before the end. None of the characters, in fact, get to see the whole story. Neither do we. Even the very end leaves doubts.
"Yet the book, even its conclusion, is satisfying. It is entirely appropriate that, containing several narratives of fractured perspective, the conclusion does not attempt to patch things up. The final conversation between Kez and Delly Roche, with both sharing a profound and disturbing experience, is conducted at odds, getting close to a single narrative but not converging.
"And here’s the thing: Irish writing in the past has tended to mix brilliant characterisation, comedy and description with a tragic narrative progression. It perhaps was the only possible outcome of such comic excess in the face of Irish reality. The bottom line was that nothing would change. The Irish were doomed to failure, to repeat endlessly and with resignation the same pattern.
"Joyce tells us that to remember everything would be a form of madness. He should know – he represents a literature endlessly documenting our past and repeating that past into the future. With the thriller, however, there is very clearly a before and after: something or someone is discovered or uncovered. We learn something, or the characters learn something that they did not know and, with that, everything changes. But at the end of The Parts, there is the implication that a combination of remembering and forgetting allows Delly and Kez to move on and leave the past behind. In a dramatic and suspense-filled conclusion, the narrative moves into thriller mode and in doing so suggests an Ireland that is capable of renewal, of discovery, of happy endings.
"The novel contains a narrative thread involving the late Daniel Gilmore and how he developed a drug that makes those who take it forget traumatic events. It is said that the drug was used to make the world forget a Third World War fought in the 1950s that the US won. This seems to be a metaphor about memory as a trap, about liberation from the past and starting afresh. Here (as in The Valparaiso Voyage), a thrilling end allows some of the characters to survive and fight another day, gives some of the bad guys their comeuppance and enables the reader to understand something that was until then concealed.
"The characters, like their respective endings, are complex and heterogeneous. Both Kitty and George end up badly; Delly and Joe seem to return to their old lives but with greater understanding; Barry finally establishes contact with the people that surround him. Each is transformed by experiences that have turned their lives upside down and inside out on a roller-coaster Dublin ride that has nothing to do with the paralysis described in Dubliners, for example.
"Kez, as he escapes, joins the others in the standard narrative of the text and appears to have forgotten that his ‘real’ name is Kez. Leaving Dublin, he can also leave behind his alter egos and accept ‘Kevin’ as his real identity (we never discover his surname) much as he accepts the fact that – as his fellow passenger comments – here we are, now, and that is good: no more delusions or flights of fancy.
"Kevin’s father is absent from both the family and the book. Kevin seems to refind himself and a future by leaving Dublin. These are recognisable elements of an Irish narrative. But something is fundamentally different: Dublin has changed and the private woes of its citizens are personal and do not reflect a society in general. There are people, happy and normal. There is Albert, for example, Joe’s neighbour, a Nigerian doctor working in St. James’s Hospital and, it appears, a good father.
"That a writer can so brilliantly and confidently absorb and move on from the canon and standard tropes of Irish writing while still performing the important role of portraying a changing society to itself and to the literary world is a tribute to the talent of Keith Ridgway. That the thriller should become an important device in the toolbox of Irish writers suggests that Irish reality, though already well known and documented, is still capable of surprise and is no longer limited by its past."
January 13, 2016
Purchased years ago and stuck on my shelf for umpteen years, when I did get round to this it was pretty good. Though it took some time to 'get going', and the focus on the handful of different character POVs was slightly difficult to keep track of in early chapters, it developed into an interesting and unusual well-plotted contemporary Irish novel. There were some believable yet intriguing characters, the plot was pretty involving, and I found the writing readable and frequently witty. It's hard to pinpoint what it reminded me of - partly Chris Brookmyre / Colin Bateman, partly Douglas Coupland. I would read others by the same author, though this was at times a little hard work due to the size and ambition of the story.
August 20, 2014
Fantastic. Exceptionally well written. The characters were mostly wonderful, especially rent boy Kez and radio producer Barry. The plot, when it kicks in, stretches credibility somewhat (I'm thinking of the mad doctor, whose motivation was a little unclear and who could have been more sinister) but Ridgway displays great narrative skill in weaving these characters together and making us care about them. Possibly not quite the achievement of his later 'Animals' but a real page turner.
October 18, 2026
Very, very nearly the sum of its parts.
This was a typically scabrous, weird and idiosyncratic offering from the underrated Keith Ridgway (I mean, only 10 Goodreads reviews?! Come on fellow bookworms!)
We follow a number of disparate characters, their lives various shades of squalid, desperate, hopeless, off-putting and poignant. Each of them is essentially circling the plughole of their own self-destruction, all moving separately yet perfectly in sync as they draw round and round, ever closer to the final gurgle. Right up to the end it's unclear whether they will escape the fateful pull of their own unhappy destinies or succeed in breaking free from the inevitable.
It's really very bleak, perhaps too bleak for me if it weren't for the fact that it's also really funny, there are moments of touching insight and the writing is superb. I felt the final act dragged, and didn't quite bring everything together in as satisfying a way as it could have, but overall it's still very distinctively its own thing in both tone and plotting and I like reading something that surprises and wrongfoots like this does.
Really nice book design from Faber too.
Pair it with:
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan for another funny ensemble novel about human frailty.
This was a typically scabrous, weird and idiosyncratic offering from the underrated Keith Ridgway (I mean, only 10 Goodreads reviews?! Come on fellow bookworms!)
We follow a number of disparate characters, their lives various shades of squalid, desperate, hopeless, off-putting and poignant. Each of them is essentially circling the plughole of their own self-destruction, all moving separately yet perfectly in sync as they draw round and round, ever closer to the final gurgle. Right up to the end it's unclear whether they will escape the fateful pull of their own unhappy destinies or succeed in breaking free from the inevitable.
It's really very bleak, perhaps too bleak for me if it weren't for the fact that it's also really funny, there are moments of touching insight and the writing is superb. I felt the final act dragged, and didn't quite bring everything together in as satisfying a way as it could have, but overall it's still very distinctively its own thing in both tone and plotting and I like reading something that surprises and wrongfoots like this does.
Really nice book design from Faber too.
Pair it with:
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan for another funny ensemble novel about human frailty.
February 10, 2009
This was one of those books whose cover caught my eye as I was speeding down the aisles of the library. I grabbed it after only a cursory glance at the fly leaf -- glad I did.
This one was odd. It blends the goings on of six different people, creating a tale of suspense. It's got a lot of sex and violence in it, and I wish the outcome had been a little different, but it did a good job of keeping me interested.
Ridgway has a way of using run-on sentences (they could be an entire paragraph long) but surprisingly, that didn't bother me a bit. And he had some bits that were quite lyrical and profound -- and some that were downright funny, albeit in a dark humor way.
If you want something different, try this one out.
Lori Anderson
Lori Anderson:The Store
Lori Anderson:The Blog
Twitter
This one was odd. It blends the goings on of six different people, creating a tale of suspense. It's got a lot of sex and violence in it, and I wish the outcome had been a little different, but it did a good job of keeping me interested.
Ridgway has a way of using run-on sentences (they could be an entire paragraph long) but surprisingly, that didn't bother me a bit. And he had some bits that were quite lyrical and profound -- and some that were downright funny, albeit in a dark humor way.
If you want something different, try this one out.
Lori Anderson
Lori Anderson:The Store
Lori Anderson:The Blog
December 17, 2019
At times, I was very interested in this book. There was so much going on, and at the same time, absolutely nothing was going on. I fluctuated between thinking that the large cast of characters and vast plot web was intriguing and thinking that the concept of it all was a little over-ambitious and broad. After finishing it, I feel like the connection of all the sub-plots was somewhat anti-climactic and rushed in the scheme of the whole story. This book was over 450 pages, but really only the last 50 pages were critical. The rest of it was very slow. The reason that I remained interested is because I read mostly for characters, so I was compelled by the varying personalities. I appreciated the dark and sarcastic humor that was present throughout, but that alone isn't enough to carry a story. This wasn't awful, but it also wasn't great!
June 28, 2013
Loved the long stream of consciousness style writing. love the odd nature of each character. lovely messy end. Could of skipped a few chapters on joe, his neighbors, the rent collector and Annie and still got the finish sooner.
March 2, 2020
This was a fine book and I enjoyed it more than I expected. My favourite part was the dynamic between Barry and Kez.
When I started the book, I found a Guardian review that broke down which character was associated with which symbol. I recommend doing the same thing. It will guide you for the first 50 to 100 pages.
When I started the book, I found a Guardian review that broke down which character was associated with which symbol. I recommend doing the same thing. It will guide you for the first 50 to 100 pages.
December 31, 2008
Terrible mess. I was attracted to the cover and the fact that it's set in Dublin, fair city where the girl's are so pretty...but the plot was slowwwwwwwww and I felt trapped in a depressing land and I kept reading (because I was on a plane and had no choice, it was either read, worry about plane crashes or chat to my large, smelly neighbor.) but on landing I chucked it (not literally--wouldn't do that.) Oh! I know what it reminded me of: the movie 'magnolia.' no cohesion. also, there was something lacking in the description. As I read I felt partially insensate. too bad.
July 7, 2014
Holy crap. I fell for the cover and thought reading the back it was about the staff of the radio station and they're kind of group storyline. Kind of like a cross between Fraiser and Cheers (even though one was a spinoff of the other, I'm aware). It wasn't at all and it was painfully slow moving. Kind of like going on a date w something vaguely attractive and amusing and find out you would've been better off dating lunch meat three hours later. The writing style doesn't save this either. There's no grace or ease. Just jumbled. Like no one read it before it went to press.
July 20, 2007
An odd but captivating novel set in Ireland. Some graphic male-male intimacy, some intense and cruel violence, some strong suspense.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews