I hadn’t heard of the Irish writer Donal Ryan. I doubt if I would ever have picked up the book ‘All we shall know’ if it hadn’t been on my reading group list for 2020. I almost didn’t buy it: I knew it wouldn’t arrive in time for the meeting where it was to be discussed. But I downloaded a ‘sample’ - the first few chapters - for my Kindle, and was intrigued.
So as I prefer to have a book in printed form if possible, I bought it inexpensively from ‘AwesomeBooks’. That was six months ago now, and a couple of days ago I finally decided to read it. I re-read the opening chapters, which introduce the main protagonist, a women in her thirties called Melody who lives in Ireland. She is pregnant, but the father is not her husband Pat. Instead it’s someone she has been teaching, a Traveller, or ‘tinker’ as she sometimes puts it.
It’s a bit of a sordid opening, but the writing style is rather different from usual: it’s almost stream-of-consciousness at times, with no quotation marks for direct speech. It’s supposed to be Melody’s personal journal, or at least an account of her pregnancy. There’s one chapter for each week, starting at Week Twelve.
The story is told in present tense - as Melody might write it - and there are several flashbacks and memories from the past interwoven with the main story. Not that there’s a great deal of plot. Melody isn’t even a particularly nice person. She has a hard time early in the pregnancy, with a lot of sickness, and feeling quite depressed. But she loses her temper a lot, and there’s far more bad language than I’m comfortable with, much of it quite out of place (in my view).
I felt quite sorry for Melody’s husband Pat, at first; but as the book progresses it becomes clear that he is also a rather unpleasant person. The two seem to have had a love-hate relationship since they were in their teens, both of them insecure and demanding. We learn about Melody’s best friend Breedie, and also about how Melody betrayed her, horribly and selfishly, and with - apparently - very little remorse.
Probably the nicest character in the book is another Traveller, called Mary. She and Melody bond in unlikely ways, and Mary proves to be very sensitive despite being considerably younger. Unfortunately her language is even more foul than Melody’s. But their friendship and concern for each other is one of the positive parts of the book. Melody’s elderly father is also a delightful person, somewhat neglected by his daughter, but endlessly tolerant and forgiving.
There’s a lot of emotion in the writing, and quite a bit of violence too. But other than feeling desperately sorry for Melody’s father at times, it didn’t do anything much for me. Part of the problem was never entirely believing in Melody, possibly because the author is male. He did a good job of describing the pregnancy and its symptoms, and the growing sense of the baby within.
But some of the comments about relationships seemed very masculine. In addition, in all her explorations of the past, Melody seems to have no sorrow or sadness at the way she has treated people who care for her. I was particularly disturbed that there's little mention and no retribution for her having seduced someone vulnerable, for whom she was in a position of responsibility.
The reading group was somewhat divided as to whether or not they liked the book, though I don’t now remember the reasons. The writing is good, if unusual, and the pace works well, telling the story with the different flashbacks, gradually revealing more. The ending is positive and hopeful too, albeit a little unexpected; I didn’t entirely understand why the two young people mentioned at the end would have accepted what happened.
But while I know that many people like and admire this book very much, it’s not one that appealed to me and I’m unlikely to read it again. So I wouldn’t personally recommend it.
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