Restless Souls - Softcover

Sheehan, Dan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1632460661 ISBN 13: 9781632460660

Publisher: Ig Publishing, 2018

Synopsis

Set in the early-mid 1990’s, RESTLESS SOULS tells the story of the friendship between three wayward Irish lads in their late twenties. After three years under siege in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, Tom returns to Dublin a brittle, haunted shell of his former self, suffering from severe PTSD. Karl and Gus meet him at the airport, knowing they’re unqualified to help their best friend yet determined to somehow see him through the darkness. Grasping at straws, they embark on a journey for an unlikely cure on the other side of the world, an experimental PTSD clinic on the California coast called RESTLESS SOULS. A wry, shambolic road trip that’s at turns tremendously moving and darkly funny, Restless Souls wrestles with larger themes and meditations on grief and PTSD, and on the way our memories simultaneously comfort and restrict us from growing up and moving on. Author Dan Sheehan skillfully moves between ribald humor and aching pathos to ask a question we can all relate to: in the process of growing up, how do we not also grow apart?

About this title

About the Author:

Dan Sheehan received his MFA from University College Dublin, and his fiction and non-fiction have appeared in numerous American, British and Irish newspapers and journals, including TriQuarterly, Guernica, Electric Literature, The Irish Times, The Irish Independent, Notes From The Underground, and Icarus, for the 60th anniversary of which he also served as editor-in-chief. His work has also been anthologized in New Tricks With Matches (2012) and in the Doire Press International Short Story Anthology (2013). He currently works as an editor at LitHub.com and lives with his wife, the writer Tea Obreht, in Brooklyn.

Review:

A great rattlebag of a novel, Restless Souls turns genre inside out. At turns comedic, at turns literary, at turns thriller, at turns philosophical, it never stops being a page-turner. Mixing humour with its attendant darkness, Sheehan postulates that we all must eventually face our own history. Ultimately this is a road journey into memory. This is a great debut, reminiscent of Colin Barrett, Sara Baume, Rob Doyle, Claire Louise Bennett and a whole new generation of Irish writers.
―Colum McCannauthor of the National Bestseller Let The Great World Spin

One part war story, one part bro story, and one part road trip, Restless Souls is a wonderful debut by a talented, intelligent writer who knows how to make you think and make you feel and make you laugh. I devoured it.
―David Ebershoff, author of The Danish Girl and The 19th Wife

Restless Souls is a hilariously shambolic road trip, a moving, freaked out, at times bruisingly mordant examination of the purgatorial agonies of PTSD, and above all a bawdy, alive, profane panegyric to the indissoluble bonds of friendship.

―Colin Barrett, author of Young Skins, National Book Award 5 Under 35 Honoree and Winner of the Guardian First Book Award

Restless Souls is the funniest sad book I've read in a long time, and a first novel of amazing complexity and maturity. Sheehan shows us the traumas of war and family like a seasoned veteran of both, and administers jokes like a battlefield nurse. A terrific debut from a dynamic new writer.
―J. Robert Lennon, author of Broken River

Bittersweet might be the word for the feeling Dan Sheehan conjures up with this tale of three childhood friends trying to put things right, except that the warmth and depth with which he portrays the challenges of friendship go way beyond sweetness, and there's nothing bitter about the anger and darkness into which he is unafraid to send his characters; instead, this is a story of what happens when the best of intentions meet the hardest of truths. Here are the shadow of war, the long reach of trauma, and the moments when it becomes clear that shared memories, and banter, and boyhood code, may no longer be enough. A touching, brave book.
―Belinda McKeon, author of Tender

Restless Souls is a terrific debut novel, bold and wise, each page lit with wit and with feeling. In his examination of friendship, Ireland, and a distant Sarajevo under siege, Dan Sheehan marks himself out as a writer to watch.
―Jonathan Lee, author of High Dive

"Tender and rambunctious and animated by a dauntless faith in human connection, RESTLESS SOULS is a book that that boldly ranges across the borders of nations, decades, and literary genres. Sheehan is a brave new voice in fiction, fusing comedy and heart to explore a friendship transformed by trauma, but vitally, achingly resilient nevertheless."―Alexandra Kleeman, author of YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE

"Dan Sheehan has turned the American road novel into an international affair... he writes at the intersection of history, compassion, humor, and the humane. RESTLESS SOULS has a roaming heart like Kerouac, banter like Martin McDonagh, but with a touch more redemption and soul. "―Alex Gilvarry, author of EASTMAN WAS HERE, National Book Award 5 Under 35 Honoree

About this edition

• Publisher: Ig Publishing
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1632460661
• ISBN 13: 9781632460660
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256