A Shock

Starred review from May 10, 2021
Sex, lies, and drugs shape the interlocking and recursive narratives in Irish writer Ridgway’s marvelous latest (after Hawthorn & Child), revolving around a set of neighboring London houses. One day, an unnamed widow receives a visit from the younger couple next door, who announce they’re throwing a party. During the noisy festivities, the widow pulls away the loose plaster from her side of the houses’ shared wall and crawls into the space between to have a look. This surreal, rodentlike scenario has echoes throughout: a local pub deals with a mouse problem; another couple, Stan and Maria, finds a rat in their flat; a plumber’s helper hides in a client’s attic after accidently locking himself in the house. Along the way, Ridgway delves into the weekend adventures of Tommy, a young man feeling disembodied while on some kind of tranquilizer drug, who pays a visit to an older man for sex. There’s also a barfly who tells people his name is variously Michael, Yan, or Yves; and Maria’s teacher colleague Anna, who tells Maria a bizarre story about losing her husband after an explosion, then admits she made it up. At the end, Ridgway returns to the party scene, this time from the other side of the wall, with all the characters assembled. What lingers is the overwhelming sensory experience of Ridgway’s prose (on Tommy: “His skin was a leathery peel. A wet dry thing. He had been scraped and reapplied to himself and now he was dying in the street like an ant on a fire”). This one sets the reader’s mind ablaze.

Starred review from May 1, 2021
A group of Londoners wrestle with intimacy, trust, and memory. Irish author Ridgway's first novel in eight years doesn't necessarily lend itself to an easy description. It follows the lives of a number of people based in London, though the connections between these characters--or even when these scenes take place in relation to one another--aren't always apparent. When certain moments click into place, such as the significance of one character's shouting at a rat or the way a conversation about a man named Gary adds depth to an earlier scene, the effect is transportive. Where this novel excels in particular is in Ridgway's ability to evoke the mental states of his characters, especially when they pass outside of lucidity. That the novel opens with a section centered around an aging widow whose memory isn't as reliable as it once was and who's struggling with paranoia and depression in the wake of her husband's death does a fine job of preparing the reader for what's coming. This reaches its apex in a long chapter detailing a drug-fueled assignation between Frank and Tommy. That both men are using a prodigious amount of crystal meth gives the chapter a delirious feel, but Ridgway details that in intriguingly specific ways, such as a moment when Tommy realizes that his favorite part of a Charles Mingus record is the sound of a washing machine coming from another room. At the same time, numerous conversations about politics--including the plight of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and whether someone can be both your friend and your boss--add another dimension to the narrative. Once this novel clicks into place, its blend of the heady and the visceral is immersive and compelling.

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