Dear Great Book Guru, My friends and I love StoryTime at Sea Cliff Beach.  Every Wednesday throughout the summer at 10:30 we meet up for a story, songs, and a bubble parade under the lovely blue canvases. Last week, one of the parents mentioned a new book made up of the voices of twenty-one residents of a small village in County Limerick. It sounds interesting – thoughts?  Storytime Fan

Dear Storytime Fan, Donal Ryan’s HEART BE AT PEACE tells the story of a village coming back from disastrous economic turmoil. But old grudges and new problems beset the community. Twenty-one residents -all interconnected - tell their stories in short, lyrical chapters. Bobby is a middle-aged man with a loving wife and a booming business but is beset with terrible rage. Milly is a young girl torn by love for her grandmother and a very dangerous young man. Pokey is a young man running a bogus school that provides illegal visas. Lily is a witch by training and makes her living selling potions to needy neighbors.  Dylan is a young boy who was kidnapped for two days and troubled for years after.  Sean is torturing a lifelong friend with compromising photos. Jim is a retired policeman who says: “Madness comes circling around - every ten years - as sure as the sun rises.”  Each of the residents tells his/her story and we come to see the value of village life and – yes - its vexations. Some stories are more nuanced but all show a deep understanding of difficult situations - the most difficult being an insidious drug ring. Both young and old are impacted and the eventual resolution is disturbing but inevitable. Recommended!