When Good Reading is not Enough: From a Low and Quiet Sea

Once in a while, it happens to read books that are so beautifully written but with stories I do not relate to at all. Or without a clear story in the mesmerizing, attention-catching sense of the word.

The prose of From a Low and Quiet Sea is like no other I´ve read in the last months. Crafted sentences with chains of words generating dramatic worlds in their own right. For me, it was my first encounter with Donal Ryan and I was definitely sorry for not discovering his beautiful writing earlier.

The book is relatively short, less than 200 pages, with an equally easy narrative structure. It includes three relatively independent stories, featuring three men: Farouk, a medical doctor and a refugee from Syria, Lampy, an Irishman working in a nursing home as a driver and John, another Irishman, of an advanced age reviewing his past deeds. Characters from the stories are reunited in the last story closing the book.

The opening story, featuring the drama of Farouk trying to figure out the fate of his wife and daughter, dead by drowing during crossing the sea, is one of the strongest and coherent of all. His struggle to accept the denial as a reality is extraordinary told with a strength that cannot be forget easily. After this strong start, I´ve felt that the intensity and relevance of the other stories relatively limited. The exceptional structure of the characters and of the phrasing remains but the stories do not move anyway. They are like moments of lecture turning round and around with no chance in sight to create a story, just monologous snapshots of everyday life. As for the ending, although it was a good idea to create a connection between the stories, it did not equate the opening. Unfortunately, because it´s such a great writing. Or mabye it is me, that I am hungry for stories well told, so hungry that sometimes I may tolerate a mediocre writing for the sake of it.

Rating: 3 stars