Keith Ridgway

Finally, after worrisomely saying he'd given up writing, Ridgway gives us A Shock, his thrilling and unsparing, slippery and shockingly good new novel. Formed as a rondel of interlocking stories with a clutch of more or less loosely connected repeating characters, it's at once deracinated yet potent with place, druggy yet frighteningly shot through with reality. His people appear, disappear, and reappear. They're on the fringes of London, clinging on--to sanity or solvency or a story--by their fingernails, consumed by emotions and anxieties in fuzzily understood situations. It's a deft, high-wire act, full of imprecise yet sharp dialog and witchy sleights of hand in a manner reminiscent of Muriel Spark, and delivering a knock-out punch of an ending. Perhaps Ridgway's most breathtaking quality is his scintillating stealthiness: you can never quite put your finger on how he casts his spell--he delivers the shock of a master jewel thief (already far off and scot free) stealing your watch: when at some point you look down at your wrist, all you see is that in more than one way you don't know what time it is...

A Shock

The two protagonists of the title are mid-ranking policemen operating amongst London's criminal classes, but each is plagued by dreams of elsewhere and, in the case of Hawthorn, a nightlife of visceral intensity that sits at odds with his carefully-composed placid family mask but has the habit of spilling over into his working life as a policeman. Ridgway has much to say, through showing not telling, about male violence, crowd psychology, the borders between play and abuse, and the motivations of policemen and criminals. But this is no humdrum crime novel. Ridgway is writing about people whose understanding of their own situations is only partial and fuzzy, who are consumed by emotions and motivations and narratives, or the lack thereof, that they cannot master. He focuses on peripheral figures to whom things happen, and happen confusingly, and his fictional strategies reflect this focus, so that his fictions themselves have an air of incompleteness and frustration about them. It's a high-wire act for a novelist but one that commands attention and provokes the dropping of jaws.

Hawthorn and Child

Ever since Keith Ridgway published his landmark cult novel Hawthorn & Child, his ardent fans have yearned for more Finally, Ridgway gives us A Shock, his thrilling and unsparing, slippery and shockingly good new novel. Formed as a rondel of interlocking stories with a clutch of more or less loosely connected repeating characters, it’s at once deracinated yet potent with place, druggy yet frighteningly shot through with reality. His people appear, disappear, and reappear. They’re on the fringes of London, clinging to sanity or solvency or a story by their fingernails, consumed by emotions and anxieties in fuzzily understood situations. A deft, high-wire act, full of imprecise yet sharp dialog as well as witchy sleights of hand reminiscent of Muriel Spark, A Shock delivers a knockout punch of an ending. Perhaps Ridgway’s most breathtaking quality is his scintillating stealthiness: you can never quite put your finger on how he casts his spell—he delivers the shock of a master jewel thief (already far-off and scot-free) stealing your watch: when at some point you look down at your wrist, all you see is that in more than one way you don’t know what time it is…

After her abusive husband is released from prison, Englishwoman Grace Quinn finally plots her escape after twenty years, only to find her act of desperation leading her further into the world she is trying to deny. A first novel. 15,000 first printing.

The Long Falling

Collects three short stories using innovative and vivid dialogue.

Never Love a Gambler

A novel of confusion and paranoia, love and doubt, fear and hysteria: unsettling, unhinged, provocative and bestially funny, 'Animals' is for human beings everywhere.

Animals

An unsparing and slippery, but thrilling and memorable novel from the fringes of urban life by cult writer Keith Ridgway.

Marvelous stories by the Irish writer acclaimed by Zadie Smith as “idiosyncratic and fascinating” Never Love a Gambler is a showcase for the exceptional talents of Keith Ridgway. The Times (London) praised his stories as “flawlessly structured yarns told in lovingly crafted prose.” Ridgway’s characters negotiate their way through love, madness, lust, anger, religious obsession, crime, and absence in stories told with innovative mastery — brightened by fiercely vivid dialogues. Never Love a Gambler is a mental rust-remover: refreshing, bracing, and often violently funny.

These stories bring to life a strange Dublin, full of pathos and wry humour. They uncover the workings of a variety of relationships between people, place and time as the characters negotiate their way through love, lust, anger, religious obsession, language and absence.

Standard Time

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.

Keith Ridgway

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