Something terrible has happened to Jack but no one seems to want to talk about it.

His uncles can tell him about everything from quantum physics to how to hunt for deer, but they can’t seem to tell him anything about their own sister or why Jack doesn’t feel sad for her in the way he should, or why Grandad tries to shoot Jack’s dad when he gets out of the hospital.

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Still, there’s work to be done in the oily wonderland of his uncles’ garage; there’s his beautiful aunt Rose to hypnotise him and his loving grandparents to console him; then there’s JJ, who wants to fight him one day and save him the next.

But with so many questions, in a family with so many secrets, it is difficult for Jack to understand the person he is becoming. How can a simple boy learn to become a king?

My Review

What a remarkable book this is. Ryan deals with suicide and mental health in such a sympathetic way. The writing is sublime and all the characters from fourteen-year-old Jack (he’s twelve at the beginning of the book), to his uncles Theo and Haulie, uncle JJ (who is only two years older than Jack but has learning difficulties), his grandparents and his Auntie Rose. Jack fantasises about Rose, but then she’s beautiful and he’s a hormonal teenager. She is still his Mam’s sister however.

I felt really sorry for Jack’s father, Tom. I thought that there was a tiny bit of blame placed on him just because he’s an immigrant. Almost as if no-one is surprised he went a bit doolally. After all, he’s from Czechoslovakia. I know, because my parents emigrated from Eastern Europe during the war. Maybe that’s why Where Are The Kings resonated with me more than Heart Be At Peace. It’s also unusual for the father to be institutionalised for mental illness, rather than the mother. Women were usually the ones treated for their ‘nerves’.

My mother suffered from chronic anxiety and agoraphobia and talked endlessly about how she would throw herself out of the window if she went upstairs, or stab herself with the scissors if you left them near her. Only she never did either. But Jack’s Mam drowned herself in the lake and we travel through Jack’s feelings as the story progresses. We don’t discover why she did it until the end of the book.

Where Are The Kings is very moving and I confess I cried buckets at the end. I’ll be looking out for more works by this author in the future.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of the #RandomThingsTours #blogtour

About the Author

Donal Ryan is an award-winning author from Nenagh, County Tipperary, whose work has been published in over twenty languages to major critical acclaim. The Spinning Heart won the Guardian First Book Award, the EU Prize for Literature (Ireland), and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards; it was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize, and was voted ‘Irish Book of the Decade’. His fourth novel, From a Low and Quiet Sea, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2018, and won the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. His novel, Strange Flowers, was voted Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, and was a number one bestseller, as was his most recent novel The Queen of Dirt Island, which was also shortlisted for Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. Donal lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. He lives with his wife Anne Marie and their two children just outside Limerick City.