“Has the feel of a classic American western” — Publishers Weekly

Review of Red Sky in Morning from PUBLISHERS WEEKLY:

The plot line of this rewarding debut has the feel of a classic American western: in 1832, Coll Coyle kills a powerful local landowner, then flees in fear of frontier justice at the hands of the landlord’s sadistic henchman, John Faller. But Lynch, an Irish writer living in Dublin, has set his story not west of the Mississippi, but in the west of Ireland (a rural area in County Donegal). Coyle leaves his wife and daughter behind and eventually strikes out for America, Faller hot on his heels. Coyle’s sick with fever (pneumonia, or possibly consumption) and endures a frightening, brutal transatlantic passage, but eventually lands in Philadelphia, where he joins other immigrants as laborers on “a new kind of engineering. A locomotive line.” This grim story gets grimmer: his co-workers are dying of cholera, and Faller tracks Coyle down in America as this very literary book moves toward its violent climax. Lynch’s prose is sharply observed, and his themes are elemental and powerful: the violence of existence, the illusion of choice in a fatalistic universe. People, says Faller, “are animals, brutes, blind and stupid.”

Reviewed on: 07/08/2013 Release date: 11/05/2013

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US buzz for Red Sky in Morning

Hot on the heels of RED SKY IN MORNING’s selection by Publishers Weekly in the US as a 2013 BEA Buzz Book, Barbara Hoffert of the esteemed Library Journal has chosen the book as one of the publishing highlights of November. This is what she has to say about it:

“Night sky was black and then there was blood, morning crack of light on the edge of the earth.” That’s the opening line of Lynch’s debut novel, just another substantiation of the adage that the Irish can really, really write. If Dublin-based Lynch’s taut, absorbing, acerbically lyrical prose weren’t enough, there’s the intense and revelatory plot. Having killed a man in 1832 County Donegal whose father is an expert tracker now bent on vengeance, Coll Coyle goes on the run—all the way to the cholera-soaked work camps of the Philadelphia railroad. Lynch draws partly on actual events at a camp where recent evidence suggests that violence rather than illness led to the deaths of 57 Irish workers. Get it for all smart readers.

Guest post for Waterstones

Here is a piece I wrote as a guest contributor to the Waterstones blog. You can read the article here, or below.

History is tangled in myth

There is a question I get asked by journalists all the time — a question many writers find themselves being asked at some stage. It goes like this: “why did you write an historical novel? Would you not consider writing a contemporary one instead?”

It’s an odd question, but as a former journalist, I think I can understand it. The journalist, caught up in the narrow tumult of rolling news, looks to the novelist to explain more widely the times we are in. The novelist, they believe, is freed to take a look at the bigger picture; they should hold a mirror to the moment.

My answer, of course, to that question is this: I did write a contemporary novel. I’m not even convinced there is such a thing as an historical novel. There are, of course, novels set in the past. But all novels written today are contemporary. They are all mirrors to the moment. They come from minds that have been forged by the heat of the present. They can only speak of the current age.

I have often wondered what it would be like to show Red Sky In Morning to one of my characters. An Irishman hedge-schooled in English or to a second-generation Dutch settler in Pennsylvania in 1832. Some of them would, perhaps, quietly suck on a pipe and give me a squinty-eyed look before turning silently away. Others, more fervent, might have me hounded for preaching the work of the devil. To them, little of what I write would make sense.

Contemporary writers use history in the novel to speak of contemporary things. They may not even mean to but they do. Historical settings are like a stick held in water: they are a refraction — the stick looks crooked but the line is true. It is just a trick of the light. History can be used to allow us see the current moment in  a different way. Novels set in the past can speak to us of general human truths — of what it is to be alive. For what is most essential to be alive on earth in 1832 is the same as it is today. It is both myth and fallacy to think that life changes.

When I came across the story of events at Duffy’s Cut near Philadelphia in 1832, I was struck by something powerful. Here was a moment of history that speaks directly to the present. The story behind Duffy’s Cut is this: In 1832, 57 men from Ulster were selected on the quays of Philadelphia by a man called Duffy and taken to work on a railway dig. Not a lot is known after this — they were strange men in a strange country and few cared about them. What we do know is that a few months later, all of them were dead, most likely buried in a mass grave, and their story seems covered-up.

The true story of what happened has over time become a mystery. What we try to understand as history is tangled in myth. What archaeologists working at the site increasingly believe is that the men at Duffy’s Cut were murdered. Cholera was sweeping across America and had struck the camp, though the death rate of cholera reaches to about 60%. Cholera can not explain the deaths of all of them. Some of the remains that have been found show evidence of violent trauma to the head. The theory is this: the men were murdered en masse to stop the disease getting out.

Part of this story features in Red Sky In Morning. It is up to the reader to make of it what they will. What I know is this: when I began writing the novel, I lived in a house with a family on one side and a middle-aged lady on the other, both of them settled in the area a long time. As I look up today from my computer, all of them are gone. The woman sold up and moved to America. The family abandoned their home for Canada. I know I will not see them again. These are the times we live in. Everything and nothing has changed.

Paul Lynch, for Waterstones.com/blog

You can buy Red Sky In Morning at your local Waterstones bookshop (http://bit.ly/Yu5LpV) or online at Waterstones.com (http://bit.ly/1c3lFdZ)