Rob Doyle

Jean-Paul Finnegan stands on board the Ulysses ferry heading home to Ireland. 'Not one person in Ireland has even read Joyce!' he rants, terrifying the passengers around him. A young man in the grip of a dark depression roams the vast, formless landscape of a Dublin industrial park where he meets a strange vagrant in the grip of a dangerous ideology. A woman fleeing the break-up of a long term relationship finds herself taking part in an unusual sleep experiment. A man obsessed with Nietzsche clings desperately to his girlfriend's red shoes.

This is the Ritual

Amanda Wells

Well, that was intense.

I enjoyed reading a book that was reticent to tell you what was really going on in each story. There are some gems in here, and some images that I wasn't sure about, but that stuck in my head regardless.

If you like to toy that line between poetry and prose, I'd recommend it. Definitely not what I'd call light-hearted or uplifting, and I think if you came to this book with too much cynicism you might find it trying a bit too hard to be avant-garde. But I liked it.

This is the Ritual

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