Irish Author Dolan Ryan's "All We Shall Know" A Remarkable Tale of Torment and Redemption READ IT!

Ryan Dolan (b Ireland 1977) is an acclaimed writer of novels & short stories.  Dolan's novel "the Spinning Heart" was listed for the Man Booker Award & received the Guardian First Book Award ('13).  "All We Shall Know" is a story that is filled with torment, grief, betrayal, misguided loyalty & convictions, compassion & redemption.  Ryan is a skillful writer who embodies the voice of our female heroine, Melody.  We meet Melody as a young teen while at a private Irish high school.  She is an outsider who forms a tight friendship with Breedie.  Both girls are looked down upon by the popular school set.  Ryan fully embodies the mindset of Melody.  He cleverly builds tension by structuring his novel charting the weeks & progress of Melody's pregnancy.  The narrative follows Melody's illicit conception, to the birth of her beloved baby.  Her developing pregancy coincides with the brewing feud between warring clans leading up to both the birth of her child & the cataclysmic combustion between opposing bloodlines.   As a teen, Melody's headis was turned by Pat, the 1st boy she ever kissed & later marries.  Their high school romance elevates Melody into the in crowd abandoning Breedie to fend for herself.  Both Melodie's betrayal to her friend and her illegal & adulterous affair are intimated early in the novel.   But, Ryan's stark & poignant writing slowly & painfully release all the hefty damages & remorse with unbearable madness & torment.  The observations on a marriage made at too young an age are solemn & sagacious.  "How did love's memory fade so completely from us?  We should have seen more of the world, less of each other, and more of other people.  We fastened ourselves too tightly together; we were two people sharing one life, so we had only half a life each."  Melody is aptly named for the pervasive melancholy & her failure to forgive herself her transgressions.  While pregnant, Melody attaches herself to a young woman named Mary who is shunned & brutalized by both her family & members of the clan into which she married for her damnatory disloyalty.  The novel at times is overburdened by religious fervor, barbaric clan violent retribution, cruelty & insurmountable shame & guilt.  Still, there is a prevailing strength, dignity & compassion that persists.  There is boundless love between Melody & her consoling father, between Melody & her unborn child & Melody with her selfless protectiveness over Mary.   Ryan's literary style is poetic and scorching.  "All We Shall Know" is an unforgettable, graceful, ambitious work that spans the range of humanity.  "No one can tell the story of a life or a friendship or a death or a marriage day for day for day."