{"product_id":"waking-of-willie-ryan-1","title":"John Broderick: The Waking Of Willie Ryan [2026]","description":"\u003cp\u003eLong overlooked but now recognised as a quietly radical masterpiece, \u003cem\u003eThe Waking of Willie Ryan\u003c\/em\u003e reveals John Broderick as one of the most incisive chroniclers of mid-century Ireland. Set in a midlands town where beauty and brutality uneasily coexist, the novel follows the return of Willie Ryan - once scapegoated for his relationships with men, institutionalised, and written out of local memory - who comes home to die and, in doing so, unsettles the pieties that once destroyed him.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eBroderick's portrait of Willie is unforgettably tender: a gay man whose dignity, vulnerability and refusal 'to serve' expose the hypocrisies of a society built on fear. Through crystalline prose and an unsparing eye, Broderick maps the forces - clerical authority, bourgeois respectability, inherited shame - that shaped Irish life in the 1960s.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eA pioneering exploration of queer Irish experience and a devastating critique of provincial cruelty, \u003cem\u003eThe Waking of Willie Ryan\u003c\/em\u003e stands alongside the great modern Irish novels for its moral clarity, elegance, and emotional force.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Broderick, John \u0026 Hewitt, Sean","offers":[{"title":"New","offer_id":53426660835667,"sku":"9781843519898","price":12.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0616\/4001\/6057\/files\/broderick-john-hewitt-sean-john-broderick-the-waking-of-willie-ryan-2026-9781843519898-1231561308.jpg?v=1775692508","url":"https:\/\/chaptersbookstore.com\/products\/waking-of-willie-ryan-1","provider":"Chapters Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}