From a Low and Quiet Sea

A thing of such beauty and compassion, a reminder of what the very finest sentences can do to shatter and then reassemble our hearts * Kamila Shamsie *
Beautiful and affecting * David Nicholls *
I struggle to think of a writer who has been so prolific and consistent in quality as Ryan . . . Brutally honest, moving and often hilarious * Guardian *
An engrossing, unpredictable, beautifully crafted novel; Donal Ryan is giving us characters - their angles and their language - that we haven’t seen in Irish literature before. -- RODDY DOYLE
Donal Ryan has not only bounded over a wall into new territory, but built himself a castle there . . . This is a superb novel. -- JOHN BOYNE
From a Low and Quiet Sea is not only very cleverly constructed, but deeply moving too. I loved it. * Louis de Bernières *
Donal Ryan writes characters so well that as a reader you think ‘I’ve met that man’, or ‘I know that woman.’ But as a writer you simply wonder ‘how does he do it?’ From a Low and Quiet Sea is brutal and beautiful, carefully crafted portraits, deep and real, tied together, fashioned by a true artist. I absolutely loved it. -- KIT DE WAAL
Themes of kindness and humanity are the binding thread…and Ryan writes of them with characteristic warmth and insight. * Sunday Times *
The book has stayed with me -- Jonathan Franzen * Guardian, Best Books of 2018 *
It’s a beautiful, luminous kind of piece - full of mystery, compassion, woven with such skill; heartbreaking and restorative. I will carry these splintered men around with me for a long time, along with the women who have loved them. -- RACHEL JOYCE
From a Low and Quiet Sea is beautifully written, compassionate and almost unbearably moving. I loved it. I would struggle to think of any other Irish author working today who writes with as much compassion as Donal Ryan. -- LOUISE O'NEILL
Donal Ryan writes with such sharp observation and humanity, that he makes us sit up and wonder at the tiny quiet internal lives of strangers. His writing is a wonderful gift to all of us. From a Low and Quiet Sea is another short and perfect novel to be inhaled in one heart-lurching gulp. -- LIZ NUGENT
Ryan is not the first Irish writer indebted to Joyce, but his work reminds me of something Sylvia Beach said about Joyce: “He told me that he had never met a bore.”…Wonderful * Irish Times *
Deft and devastating…this book is both hard-hitting and uplifting: it serves as an indictment of the care industry, but also as a tribute to the way that humans care for one another. * The Observer *
The denouement, which comes in breathless bursts, is devastating. From a Low and Quiet Sea leaves you with that sense of discombobulating enlightenment that so often characterises the quiet epiphanies of great short stories. * Sunday Times *
A masterly portrait . . . the confidence with which Ryan dons the clothing of another culture marks a departure for his writing . . . a successor to John McGahern . . . It is exciting to see his subject matter move beyond his country’s borders, with the prospect of more of this to come.’ * The Spectator *
Haunting ... utterly persuasive -- Joseph O'Connor * Irish Times, Books of the Year *
The lives and stories, loves and tragedies, animating From a Low and Quiet Sea are wonderfully individual and finely alive. This is a brief book: yet one that lingers long in the reader’s mind. * New Statesman *
As moving as anything written about Syria * Mail on Sunday *
It is vomit-inducing, it’s so good. * Kit de Waal, Observer *