Book Summary and Reviews of Dooneen by Keith Ridgway

Dooneen by Keith Ridgway

Dooneen

by Keith Ridgway

  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • Publishes:
  • Jul 21, 2026, 304 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

The astonishing Irish literary magician Keith Ridgway pulls from his hat the 21st-century's Great Dublin Novel.

Bartholomew Port, known to all as Mew, steps into the bushes in a London park and steps out of the bushes in a Dublin one. Not only that―there are no cars; there are moving footpaths; there is no church; everything seems quite queer. Home by invitation, he has arrived in a Dublin that is alive with song, with rumor, with tunnels, with ghosts, and with an unmistakable sense of insurgency. In this suspiciously timeless city that breathes an old revolutionary air, Mew fiercely misses his beloved Mootie, back home in London. An unraveling, an impossibility, a gathering of voices, and a single dream, Dooneen is the layered, allusive and wildly original new novel from Keith Ridgway, "one of Ireland's best writers, in a country with no shortage of them" (The Times).

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Ridgway's scintillating and dreamlike latest teems with big ideas about the complex legacy of the Troubles in a country transformed by immigration and wealth... Mew wonders if he's dead or dreaming, but Ridgway never abandons his marvelous fantastical conceit. It's a bracing and singular state-of-the-nation novel." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A surreal joy of a novel—a remarkable work. A stunning achievement, Ridgway's novel is urgent, profound, and shimmeringly beautiful." —Booklist (starred review)

"This audaciously inventive novel does a masterful job of sustaining narrative momentum and suspense." —Kirkus Reviews

This information about Dooneen was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Keith Ridgway

Keith Ridgway is a Dubliner living in London. His previous novels include A Shock (winner of the 2022 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction), Hawthorn & Child, and Animals. He has also been awarded the Prix Fémina Étranger and Premier Roman Étranger, the O Henry Award, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. His books have been acclaimed "ingeniously slippery" (Lucy Scholes, New York Times Book Review),  "bleak, hilarious, chilling and hopeful" (Louie Conway, Vanity Fair), and "like Finnegans Wake, only readable" (John Self, London Times).

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