Customer Reviews

The Divine Ryans

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Once I started reading it, I couldn't stop. It was funny, sweet and thoughtful at the same time. One could not help feeling sorry for poor Draper Doyle as he put up with his seriously disturbed family.

And I expected great what with Catholic guilt and hockey and comic writing all in one novel. There are some very funny moments -- for example, a devastating take on tap dancing and the poor starving children of -- in this case -- Latin America. The memories of the Canadiens and the other original NHL teams before expansion, and the frigid days and nights of street hockey are exactly right. Plus, Uncle Reginald and Draper Doyle are consistently engaging and give the book most of its considerable energy, although it stretches credulity that a nine year old boy should so completely recall over several detailed pages a dream absolutely crucial to the novel's climatic moments. Bigger problems: Draper's mother is too peripheral, as ethereal as the ghost father, and Aunt Phil and Uncle Seymour are so unremittingly mean-spirited that they become more parody than human. Finally, the twist as Draper Doyle begins to recall the lost week of his father's death is unexpectedly nasty, and leaves this novel uneasily perched between the comic and terrible personal discovery. Still, while The Divine Ryans is not a must read, it is the work of an author with talent clearly under development.

I found this book quite intriging. In the spirit of "American Beauty", it is a tale about a dysfuntional family. It is told as almost a bitter sweet memoir of a real person's childhood in Newfoundland in the 1960's. You learn to dislike and like the different characters in the childs eyes and see how his divine family has truely fallen from grace. The characters in the book that should be the most devout and true are the most ignorant and irritating, these people being the preist and nun in the family. The leader of their Irish-Catholic, you could almost say cult, is the aunt of Draper Doyle (the young child). She is the most nauseating character I have yet to come across. She is filled with Hipocrisy and all the things that she is against. She also threatens the safty of Draper Doyle's newly widowed mother. Their entire future depends on Draper Doyle's recognization of his nightmares which cause him unbelievable embarassment in the face of his relative. His only refuge from his devout aunts and uncles is his uncle reginald who is one of the most endearing and genuinly funny characters I have come across. This book is fantasticly written (unlike this review, I have need of spell check) and keeps your attention from one paragraph to the next which is always a Divine thing in a book.

This is a pretty good book. The writing is clever, intelligent, and funny. However, I found virtually all of the characters to be dislikable. Also, I was hoping for the Newfoundland setting to affect the story, but really it could have taken place anywhere in Canada or even the US where hockey is popular.

This book was pure enjoyment. A great read and never disappointing. Very different from Colony of Unrequieted Dreams. I feel as I have found an author that I will able to follow for years to come.

If you are Canadian, know anything about hockey or love oddball families, you will enjoy this book. It is the touching story of the Ryan's, a Catholic family in Newfoundland who run the local Catholic newspaper. The trials and secrets of this lovely bunch of nuts, as seen through the eyes of their youngest member, is a truly memorable story.