ABSTRACT
Anne Enright’s novel ended as the recession began, with a housing market lled to the brim and houses that had become impossible to sell, while the sense of place was gradually being recongured around a new sense of boundedness. Donal Ryan’s novel The Spinning Heart1 takes place a few years into the recession and his narrative offers the reader a kaleidoscopic vision of place rendered through the lived experience of community life. In an article published in the blog ‘Ireland after Nama’ in late 2009, Mark Boyle uses metaphors to describe the general disconnection and the atmosphere of community degeneration and fragmentation were key words to describe the social situation and the gloomy atmosphere of ghost towns.2 Donal Ryan’s short novel specically addresses the issue of the becoming of such communities, proving that ction is more than apt to render all the nuances and subtleties of human communities and their economic and sociological variations.
