Rain Falls on Everyone: A search for meaning in a life engulfed by terror

Clár Ní Chonghaile

Description

'As worlds collide, a gripping story of belonging, identity, memory, culpability and forgiveness unfolds, creating a poignant and profound novel for our times.' Deborah Andrews

Theo, a young Rwandan refugee fleeing his country’s genocide, arrives in Dublin, penniless, alone and afraid. Still haunted by a traumatic memory in which his father committed a murderous act of violence, he struggles to find his place in the foreign city.

Plagued by his past, Theo is gradually drawn deeper into the world of Dublin’s feared criminal gangs, plagued by racism, fear and drugs. But a chance encounter in a restaurant with Deirdre offers him a lifeline.

Joined together through survival instincts Theo and Deirdre’s tender friendship is however soon threatened by tragedy. Can they confront their addictions to carve a future out of the catastrophe that engulfs both their lives?

Clar expertly aligns countries and cultures in this spellbinding and tough novel. Drawing on authentic inspiration the tumultuous settings come alive as you are drawn into the multi-faceted lives of Theo and Deirdre.

What Reviewers and Readers Say:

'Clar's book is a gripping thriller which manages to bring two very different worlds into synergy. She succeeds in creating a truly three dimensional African protagonist - a rare thing in popular fiction - helping us to feel both compassion and frustration at Theo's choices.' Celeste Hicks

'A fast-paced, powerful and emotional novel deftly crafted and shot through with insight, empathy and poetic beauty. As worlds collide, a gripping story of belonging, identity, memory, culpability and forgiveness unfolds, creating a poignant and profound novel for our times'. Deborah Andrews, author of 'Walking the Lights'

'Powerful, thought-provoking, and at times horrifying; yet also a compelling story of friendship against all the odds.' Nick Brownlee

'Sex, drugs and....Irish poetry meets deep Africa in the most unusual of settings. This visceral novel's imagery will stay with you for a while.' Rosie Garthwaite

'With the same assured touch that we saw in her debut novel, Clár Ní Chonghaile here weaves a vivid, moving but never sentimental tale, with deft characterisation, luminous detail and generous flashes of humour. From the very first page I knew I was in good hands.' Léan Cullinan, author of 'The Living'

'It is undoubtedly a clever novel, a novel that explains much while keeping forward momentum.' Joules Barham, Northern Reader

'Rain falling on everyone suggests that death and misfortune are indiscriminate but it is how we deal with the vagaries of nature and life that gives the individual hope and control over their future.' Rich Jones, Rich Reviews

'Rain Falls On Everyone was a unique and deeply touching novel that I thoroughly enjoyed.' Pages and Print

'This is such an impressive book... It was a pleasure to read and can highly recommend it!' Butterfly in the Sky

CHAPTER ONE 

Theo ran. Feet pounding, arms pumping, chest heaving, heart racing. In this frenzy of motion, the only still thing was his mind. He had to get away. That was the only goal: to put as much distance as he could between him and the pebble-dashed house where a man he knew little, but enough to hate, lay in a pool of sticky, gold-flecked blood. He had to get away from Deirdre’s terrified eyes, from her outstretched hands with the grazed knuckles. He sped through the estate and out onto the main road, his open anorak flapping behind him like the clipped wings of a giant crow. 

  He didn’t stop until he was heading west on a country road. He had covered miles, at first frantically and then steadily with his long, loping stride. He stopped, bent, placed his hands on his knees, and still his brain did not engage. He saw the road, noted its silvery greyness, looked up to the half-moon and then over the stone walls, across the fields. He registered the absence of cars. No surprise there at 2 am on a minor road leading out of Dublin. To his right, a two-storey house – a relic from the austere Ireland of the 1950s – loomed like a sentinel, marking the boundary between the sin-filled city and the countryside, where legend had it, maidens once danced at crossroads while boys played hurling without helmets. 

  He needed transport. It was his first clear thought since the gun went off. He would never make it on foot. Deirdre might not set the Gardaí on him right away but it’d surely happen. He’d done her a favour, no doubt about that, but sometimes people didn’t want favours. In those first, freeze-framed moments after the sharp crack that marked the beginning and the end, no one had moved, no one had said anything. Deirdre was the first to react.

 “Go, go now!” she hissed, grabbing a notebook and writing furiously. “Go to my father. He will look after you until you can get out.” 

  She pushed the paper into his hands. Did her fingers flinch as they touched his? She had written her father’s address, just a few lines of scribbled instructions, a list of villages to pass through, a left and then a right down a lane. A roadmap to oblivion. Before he left, he tried to read the moral relativities in her eyes but he found only fear. It hurt him then and the memory stung now but there would be time for a reckoning later. 

  He checked his phone. The battery was nearly dead but who would he call anyway? He clambered over the nearest wall, dislodging the top stone in his wake. It clunked dully onto his toes. He cursed, but in Kinyarwanda. The words had the force of a Taser, freezing him to the spot. He hadn’t used his own language in years. The last time was when he was around sixteen and went to a meeting for African immigrants in a church near his home in Clontarf. Teenage identity crisis, he supposed. He never returned. Instead of feeling at one with the other young men, who sat awkwardly on squeaking plastic chairs in the echo-filled basement down below the world, he felt more like an outsider than ever. The social workers – a pudgy woman in a tracksuit and garish pink lipstick and a man in the kind of jumper most of the young black kids wouldn’t be seen dead in – were kind and wellmeaning and utterly clueless about what made the lads around them tick. It wasn’t their fault. They were offering practical solutions – language classes, dole forms, counselling services – when what the young men wanted was someone to wave a magic wand over their heads to make them the same as everyone else. All teenagers need to comply with the pitiless rules that govern their world and they were no different. But because they were black, and had funny accents, and strange, sometimes tragic, tales of foreign lands, they would never fit in. The boys knew it but they didn’t get this far by respecting the limits of the possible. The social workers, who might well have had teenagers at home with their own hang-ups about belonging, didn’t recognise that same desperation in the boys around them, though it was in every snazzily trainered foot, every awkwardly mumbled Dublin colloquialism, every too sharp haircut. 

  

Sujets

• On the run
• Current affairs
• Somatosensory system
• Disturbance
• Domestic violence
• Literature
• Poetic
• Friendship
• Broken Home
• Standoff
• Substance Abuse
• Criminal gang
• Political thriller
• Social novel
• Pace (speed)
• Child abuse
• Profound
• Social issues
• Substance dependence
• Literary fiction
• Women's fiction
• Modern history
• Rwandan Genocide
• Fight-or-flight response
• Drug use
• Illegal drug trade
• Power (philosophy)
• Mass murder
• Multiculturalism
• Loss
• Thought
• 20th century
• Political fiction
• Politics
• Organized crime
• Northern Ireland
• Genocide
• Author
• Addiction
• Rwanda
• Maeve Binchy
• Audrey Niffenegger
• Murder
• Dark
• Grief
• Poignant
• Family
• Contemporary
• Unique
• Survivor
• Tragedy
• Emotional
• Underworld
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf
• Suspense
• Thriller
• Violence
• Fiction
• Friends
• Immigration
• Dublin

Informations

• Publié par: Legend Press
• Date de parution: 15 juillet 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 15
• EAN13: 9781785079009
• Langue: English

Extrait