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The Death of Finn by Oran Ryan Available here

Ryan's novel , The Death of Finn concerns the sudden and untimely death of Joe Finn, a brilliant and eccentric young monk, and traces the impact of his death on the people around him, in particular his one-time best friend Frank, himself an ex-monk. The Death of Finn is a love story and a story of friendship. This beautifully written novel traces the relationship between Frank Ryan and Joe Finn, and the effect that this relationship, Finn’s life and death has on Frank and on other people in their lives. It explores love and its absence as well as the power of institutions over individual relationships. Finn manages to be a truly Irish book while simultaneously evoking an internationally recognisable sense of place. It is also evocative of the past while being truly modern. Resplendent with beautiful one-liners and carefully drawn characters, it is sure to become and to remain one of the classics of Irish literature as Oran Ryan will become and remain one of its voices. Extracts from Giovanni Seipi at Home Underlying the main text of The Death of Finn is a sub-text concerning a book, Giovanni Seipi at Home that the main character of the novel, Joe Finn, has written. In a unique venture, Seven Towers has produced a miniature version of extracts from this book to accompany the publication of The Death of Finn, Extracts from Giovanni Seipi at Home. This miniature book is in the form of an academic biography and is written in the voice of Joe Finn.

Reviews of The Death of Finn Seamus Cashman , (author, poet and founder of one of Ireland’s leading literary and cultural publishing houses, Wolfhound Press ) described Oran as a new and powerful voice in Irish literature. He praised The Death of Finn for the fine detail of the writing, and the clarity and simplicity of expression and phraseology and described it as a serious and entertaining and perceptive novel of relationships and ideas and a book which will hold readers enthralled and awakened as they journey through it. The Death of Finn succeeds well as a study of the search for faith and the inner workings of monasticism as seen from the Irish Catholic viewpoint, while also addressing the question of honesty with self and with others” Irish Emigrant (www.emigrant.ie ) The book covers . . . evoking memories of vintage Penguin design . . . will excite the collectors amongst us who believe the concept of the first edition has long expired. Extra marks to whoever had the great idea of issuing the miniature companion piece to the novel . . . such attention to detail will go far.” Ronan Browne, Village. (www.villagemagazine.ie )