A Shock

A Shock inhabits the secret life of a city, its hidden energies. It dramatizes how patterns form and then disperse, how stories are made and relationships created. Keith Ridgway offers his London a luminous glow, but his competing narratives are also rooted in a real place, with a remarkable sense of character and the shifting systems that make up his contemporary urban space -- Colm Toibin Keith Ridgway's gifts as a writer are many: his complex, vivid characters, his ability to create a humane and tender cityscape in an unfeeling metropolis, and to dig into our fallibilities and desires with such humour and compassion -- Sinead Gleeson A Shock is a perfect, living circle of beauty and mystery; clear-sighted and compassionate, and, at times, wonderfully funny. The radiance and vitality of the writing, and its, frankly amazing, control and precision, reminded me of Henry Green but with a warmth and reflective quality that deserves to reach many readers -- David Hayden Ridgway brings an impeccably attentive ear and eye to the stories and dreams and defiances of his contemporary London characters. In these multiple voices he miraculously captures, with innovative clarity, what it means to be alive here and now, in or out of it on love or loneliness or the phone. A great and generous book, an incomparable achievement -- Richard Beard This modern look at (dis)connection is stunning, in all its story parts, and as a whole, it's a brilliant mind fuck. Political, pertinent, spunky and funny, A Shock is a grand sweep of modern storytelling. Hold out for the mice . . . -- June Caldwell Simply imagine being as good at anything as Keith Ridgway is at writing -- Nicole Flattery on Keith Ridgway Ridgway's superb and underrated novel captures life so convincingly that at times you forget you're reading fiction. The titular detectives mooch around London trying to solve crimes, seeking connections that prove elusive. Elizabeth Strout meets Bret Easton Ellis * Sunday Times Ireland on Hawthorn & Child * Profane, god-dappled, transcendent, even gently poetic and funny - all those things at once -- Rivka Galchen A Shock, Keith Ridgway's mesmerizing new novel-in-stories, portrays a London on the edge of the edge, precarious, strange and enthralling. Haunting each other and life itself, these characters and their stories will haunt you too! -- John Keene A fascinating and marvellously accomplished piece of work from a great and hugely under-rated Irish author -- Pat Carty * Hot Press * 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 neighbouring London houses * Publishers Weekly * Once this novel clicks into place, its blend of the heady and the visceral is immersive and compelling * Kirkus * One of the remarkable things about A Shock is how the characters get under the reader's skin . . . But what we also get, amid the well-observed portrayal of how people behave, interact and try to live, are some strange moments . . . What writers can do is tell stories, and A Shock is full not only of the characters' own stories but the ones they tell each other. It flows over with invention and imagination -- John Self * The Irish Times *