A crisis can destroy what people have built up over the years – stability, feeling of security, family life, friendship and trust. Sure, it’s good to have ideals and believe that money doesn’t give you happiness, but if you have a family to support, then these highfalutinous statements lose their meaning a little. Happiness may not provide, but it does.
“Spinning Heart” by Donal Ryan is a book about how one scam in a construction company has affected twenty-one people’s lives. It’s from so many perspectives that the narrative is being conducted. The axis of events is the scam of one of the entrepreneurs who employed many local residents. After the collapse of the company, it turns out that the employer did not pay any contributions for the employed people, so they were not entitled to any additional financial assistance. They were left without a job, and even without prospects for work, because the situation on the market did not inspire optimism at that time. Many of the people who were treated so unfairly had dependent families, which made their financial situation even hopeless.
“Spinning Heart” is a picture of what people are capable of doing in the face of their own powerlessness and financial difficulties. Here we meet a man who visited his old, sick father every day, hoping that he would eventually find him dead and thus receive an inheritance. What’s more, he thinks that his father is annoying him, stubbornly holding on to life with the rest of his strength, although he should have given up long ago. Here we have a woman who gave her body to local men to support and educate her children. Those, when grown up, are ashamed of their mothers and mostly do not keep in touch with her. There is also the father of this impostor, who broke the lives of so many families. Now, after all this, it is difficult for him to look into the eyes of people he has always valued and respected, including as conscientious workers. There are men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, everyone who has suffered from one man’s scam. Thanks to the multi-person narrative, we get to know the situation from different perspectives, each story brings something new, something that completes the rest and allows to gradually put everything together.
This is a book that is somehow not particularly light and easy to read. However, it is a reading that makes us reflect. It allows you to stop for a moment in all the hustle and bustle of everyday life and think about how fleeting material things sometimes are. In fact, something similar can happen to all of us, you never know how someone’s fate will turn out and what the situation on the labour market will look like in times of crisis.
What surprised me about this book is that I liked the cover so inconspicuous. In fact, I find it hard to even say why I perceive it so positively. I usually like more expressive covers, the ones that shout to the reader to choose them from others. Here it’s not like that at all – everything is subdued, calm and at the same time very well reflects the atmosphere of the book and its subject matter. Hats off to the graphic designer that he was able to combine this simplicity with a positive reception from the reader.
“Spinning Heart” is a book that will appeal to a fairly wide audience. I most often reach for literature on customs, pedagogical guides, detective stories and thrillers, and yet reading Donal Ryan’s publications was very pleasant for me, although not necessarily simple. It’s certainly not one of those books that you read from board to board at once. You have to give her time to read a few chapters and then think about what you have read, then the reading is more complete. At least I found a patent for this book and I’m happy with it. Yeah, I’ve even intertwined this book with something else, something lighter, and I use these treatments rather rarely. I guess I just needed a break to digest the stories and miss them. It worked.
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