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Life
1965- ; b. Dublin; one-time bass player in Friends of the Family group; issued novels Horses (1997); The Long Falling (1998); Standard Time (2001), novella; he won the “Suspended Sentence” residency in Sydney and Beijing, 2002; issued The Parts (2003), a mystery revolving around drug-culture in Dublin; winner of Rooney Prize, 2001; lives in London; winner of Prix Femina Étranger and Prix Premier Roman (France); winner of the 26th Annual Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, June 2004; issued Animals (2006), concerning an illustrator who has lost his way and sees animals everywhere around him.
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Works
Standard Time (London: Faber & Faber 2001); Horses (London: Faber & Faber, 1997); The Long Falling (London: Faber & Faber; NY: Houghton Mifflin 1998); The Parts (London: Faber & Faber 2003), 457pp., ; Animals (London: Fourth Estate 2006), 271pp.
Miscellaneous, contrib. “Grid Work” [story], in Arrows in Flight: Stories from a New Ireland, ed. Caroline Walsh (Dublin: TownHouse; UK & US: Scribner 2002), pp.291-308.
Reviews include ‘Rocky’s Rockin’ Record’, review of The Last of the Baldheads, by Ferdia Mac Anna, in The Irish Times (18 Dec. 2004), Weekend, p.11 [see extract]; review of Tenderloin, by John Butler, in The Irish Times (28 May 2011), Weekend, p.13.
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Criticism
Michael Kerrigan, reviewing The Parts, in Times Literary Supplement (7 Feb. 2002), p.21 [infra]; Derek Hand, review of The Parts, in Derek Hand, review of Keith Ridgeway, The Parts (Faber), in The Irish Times (18 Jan. 2003) [infra]; Shane Hegarty, ‘Just parts of the story’, interview with Keith Ridgeway, in The Irish Times (24 Jan. 2003) [infra].
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Commentary
Michael Kerrigan, reviewing The Parts, in Times Literary Supplement (7 Feb. 2002), writes: ‘That we are shaped and constructed, by our stories has become a commonplace of fiction; key to Keith Ridgway’s originality as a novelist is his recognition of just how uninterested in one another’s narratives we actually are. Ridgway’s third novel, The Parts, surveys a society that never quite amounts to a whole, however vast and complex it may appear. Defining Dublin at one point as a “plural proper noun”, the novel refuses to recognise its integrity as a single thing, seeing it instead as the momentary conjunction of myriad separate lives.’ (p.21.) Gives a full account of the plot and treatment, and concludes: ‘Ridgway’s Ireland is distinctly different, with few of the trappings we have come to expect of Irish literature: no politics, no myth, no Church, no scenery to speak of. His Dubliners are different too, living lives of endless possibility - hardly the history-haunted race to whom we have grown accustomed down the years. Unencumbered by land-line connections, heedless of city limits and national borders, they make person-to-person calls on their mobile phones. Citizens of the World Wide Web, unconstrained by background, unfettered by origins, they are at liberty to be themselves [...]. But where one identity is as good as another, sense of an essential individuality is lost, and with it the (perhaps illusory) feeling of trajectory, of progress which articulated earlier lives. Theirs is thus a perilous existence, its pleasures and its loyalties fleeting, and one for which a certain real heroism is required. A prophet, but no Jeremiah, Keith Ridgway sees the superficiality of contemporary culture, yet he sees too the opportunities it brings. Bleak as its vision is in so many respects, this is a novel that simply bursts with energy and incidentt, with a crowded cast of vivid characters and some enormously enjoyable comic scenes. In that respect one might conclude that The Parts is its own happy ending, a ringing affirmation of our ability to find something in each other’s stories - at when they are so ebulliently well told.’ (p.21.)
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Derek Hand, review of The Parts, in Derek Hand, review of The Parts, in The Irish Times (18 Jan. 2003), Weekend: ‘All of Keith Ridgway’s writing thus far has managed to brilliantly combine the somewhat fantastic with the seemingly mundane. This forces his readers to rethink the comfortable reality they think they know so well. / Once again in this novel, beneath the veneer of plot and action, he manages to create characters shot through with pulsating authenticity. Ridgway’s crystalline prose opens up wonderful moments of powerful perception and reflection for the reader. He has the ability to dissect gloriously the foibles of Celtic Tiger Dublin or, rather, as we are told, the cities of Dublin - with the stress very much on the plural. / [...] Modern Irish life as portrayed here consists of trivialities and insignificance. The media is seen as utterly self-contained, having no real impact beyond itself. Technology, too, as embodied in the Internet and the ubiquitous mobile phone, demonstrates how objects supposedly designed to aid communication and connection can actually exacerbate dislocation and alienation. People no longer have to be grounded in any one specific space or, indeed, identity. Contemporary Dublin thus becomes a place where one can be whoever one wants to be. And yet, all seem to be unable to fully engage with those possibilities, as if lost amid the numerous roles offered them. Kez, the real hero of the novel, realises that power and control come from perspective or the knowledge that perspective may bring. Nevertheless, he too almost loses himself among the many aliases and identities he has created. His story, and thus the novel’s main focus, is one reduced to one of basic survival. / This is a novel remarkably mindful of its own status as a text: that is, as a thing made up of signs and dots and words. [...] The result, in the end, is a compelling novel, multifaceted and multi-layered, with voices and stories jostling on the page, vying for our attention. They get it and keep it. [...]’ (See full text in RICORSO Library, “Criticism”, Reviews, infra.)
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Shane Hegarty, ‘Just parts of the story’, in The Irish Times, 24 Jan. 2003), quotes: “Most of the things I write tend to be character driven. I didn’t set out to write anything specifically about Dublin. It’s inevitable that if you take a character and set them in Dublin that they are going to say something about how Dublin is. But that isn’t what I set out to do, and I think that I wasn’t so concerned about getting things accurate to the point where I’d get frustrated by where people might drink or whatever.” (See full text in RICORSO Library, “Criticism”, Reviews, infra.)
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Quotations
The Parts (rent-boy Kez:) ‘He saw men come, many men, many times, weakly and strongly, loudly, quietly, naked, clothed, slowly, quickly, all opposites, every kind, and he thought that the world might be that moment, nothing else, just the muted spasm and the milky way, and he thought that there were probably millions. Millions of men. Millions of women. Millions of worlds, of Dublins, of him.’ Further, ‘[He believes] that eventually he’d meet every man in Dublin. That they’d all come see him sooner or later - in Dublin he ought that you were always just one step way from knowing everyone.’ (All quoted in Michael Kerrigan, reviewing The Parts, in Times Literary Supplement, 7 Feb. 2002, p.21.)[
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‘Coming of age in a bubble’, review of The Tenderloin by John Butler, in The Irish Times (28 May 2011): ‘[...] There is in The Tenderloin a shorter and better book fighting to get out. Much as there is a sharper, more relaxed Evan struggling to emerge from the annoying and uptight suburban Dublin boy whom you will spend most of this book wanting to slap. / Butler does some things beautifully. He writes well about the undulating environment of San Francisco. There is a marvellous section set in a records office where Evan temps for a while. The dialogue rings true, as do the distinctive minor characters, and there are a couple of memorable set pieces: a slightly predictable one involving an ice sculpture, and a great uneasy escapade on Sam Couples’s boat. / The ending (ignoring the epilogue), which comes when we get back to that mysterious ride in the Land Rover, is terrific. And it suggests that Butler has a real instinct for writing about the derailed ego and those mortifying moments of absurd crisis that hit the reader like a dreadful painful whack on the funny bone.’ (See full-text version in RICORSO Library, “Criticism > Reviews”, via index, or direct.)
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Notes
Roddy Doyle: Doyle remarks that Irish writers have been slow to deal with the changes of the past decade, although he believes that Keith Ridgeway The Parts is ‘quite brilliant’ in its depiction of contemporary Dublin. (Q. source.)
Ecrire l'Europe/Writing Europe (2003), the Franco-Irish Literary festival, Dublin Castle (chaired by Michael Cronin); invited Irish authors incl. Keith Ridgeway, Evelyn Conlon, Peter Fallon, Moya Cannon, Colm Tóibín.
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