Hey, it's Empire's Book at the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. In our annual Books We Love Guide,

I like looking at the books under book club ideas because the right book club book has to be

able to spark a conversation point across a wide variety of people, you know, depending on your

book club. And there's a lot anyone can relate to

in Donald Ryan's novel, The Queen of Dirt Island. It centers around the women in a family

living in the early 80s in Ireland, and it's structured in a way where you get these vignettes

of their lives. And Ryan tells MPR's Mary Louise Kelly in this interview that he wanted

the book to

capture the highs and lows of life and also the quotidian stuff in between. You know how one day

not much happens and then the next day someone close to you dies and it's this big major thing.

And then the next day is just another Tuesday, because that's how life is.

Anyway, that's ahead.

Donald Ryan's novel, The Queen of Dirt Island, is a love story.

Now, I do not mean in the traditional romantic sense.

Rather, it's about the love that four generations of women in the Alewart family feel for one another. Beginning in 1982,

the novel chronicles the lives of these four women in County Tipperary, Ireland, Mary, Eileen,

Searsha, and Pearl. We glimpse their struggles, their knock-the-walls-down fights, both with

outsiders and amongst themselves. We glimpse their commitment to one another.

Well, Donald Ryan joins me now from Limerick, Ireland. Welcome to All Things Considered.

Thank you, Mary Louise. It's such a pleasure to be here.

I want you to begin where the book begins with the birth of Sircia, who becomes the narrator.

Who is she?

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