Animals

Keith Ridgway is the author of ‘The Long Falling’ which won both the 2001 Prix Femina Etranger and Premier Roman Etranger. His collection of stories ‘Standard Time’ was published in 2001, when he won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. His second novel, ‘The Parts’, was published in 2003 (alongside his novella ‘Horses’) and was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year 2003 and published in France, Spain, Holland and the USA. He lives in north London.

‘“Animals” is both a very funny and surprising inspection of the detail of modern life, and an affecting prortait of a man trying to make sense of it.’ Independent on Sunday‘…the almost stream of consciousness deluge of paranoia and urban myth made real that constitute his recollection of these events is darkly, grimly hilarious…deeply unsettling but utterly absorbing.’ Metro‘It’s a measure of Keith Ridgway’s stylistic gift that with so little concrete action he manages to sustain a mood of brooding anticipation throughout. The first chapter is one of the most head-tighteningly suspenseful pieces of writing I’ve read in years…Like Beckett, Ridgeway knows the humour in pathos and the pathos in humour…it haunts the reader, insisting that he thinks a little more, be a little more cautious, look a little deeper. To read it, in fact, is to find oneself a little more naked in the world.’ Daily Telegraph‘He turns people inside out, detailing their quirks and vulnerabilities with engaging perceptiveness…a concatenation of anecdotes and dream revelations…unnerving in their odd accuracy.’ The Times‘…a bold attempt to convey the fluctuations of a damaged mind.’ Guardian‘Showing the disintegration of a subject is not an easy task but Ridgway pulls it off. This is not an easy or comforting read but, surrounded by ease and comfort as we are, it is all the more crucial for that.’ The Scotsman