The Divine Ryans (Between the Covers Collection) [ABRIDGED] [AUDIOBOOK] (Audio Cassette)

by Wayne Johnston (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Nine-year-old Draper Doyle Ryan, sole male heir to the once-venerable Ryan name, seems an unlikely family savior. Harried by his own frantic hormones, flustered by his many insufficiencies, and beset by a cadre of oppressive relatives, about the only defense he has is an endlessly inventive imagination. It's a fine line between coming-of-age sentimentality and gratuitous high jinks Wayne Johnston walks in his pleasing novel The Divine Ryans; the result--a snapshot of that twilight between childhood befuddlement and mature disillusionment--is unexpected and deft.

Draper Doyle's life in Newfoundland, circa mid-1960s, is as constrained as it is colorful. Cooped up in one house with various family oddballs, he views the world from the bottom rungs of the ladder. Perpetually harangued by the frigid and imperious Aunt Phil (whose powers of humiliation reach their apex when she displays a pair of his urine-stained underwear on the kitchen bulletin board), and browbeaten by one smarmy, perverse uncle, Father Seymour, the boy retreats into consoling fantasy, fretful ruminations, and the friendship of his only ally, irreverent Uncle Reginald. When Phil employs a weary argument to shame Draper Doyle into finishing a meal, Reginald wonders aloud if bulletins were "being sent to the poor people of South America by the hour, keeping them up to date about what percentage of their food children of the Western world were eating." Draper Doyle is also haunted--literally--by the ghost of his father, a mystery whose painful resolution almost miraculously offers deliverance to both him and his mother.

What is most gratifying about The Divine Ryans is that it moves so effortlessly from the comic to the bittersweet, from the madcap to the revelatory. Johnston's Twainesque aptitude transmutes drollness and hyperbole into something larger: out of his young hero's absurd comic tangles, we sense a subject slowly grasping not only the shortcomings of those who love him, but also their many travails. The book's divine. --Ben Guterson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Cahners Business Information.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: BTC Audiobooks; 3 hr 45 min/3 tp edition (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 086492237X
• ISBN-13: 978-0864922373
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 4.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Unexpected Divinity, June 17, 2000

By	Christiana Molldrem (New York) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Divine Ryans (Paperback)

I found this book quite intriging. In the spirit of "American Beauty", it is a tale about a dysfuntional family. It is told as almost a bitter sweet memoir of a real person's childhood in Newfoundland in the 1960's. You learn to dislike and like the different characters in the childs eyes and see how his divine family has truely fallen from grace. The characters in the book that should be the most devout and true are the most ignorant and irritating, these people being the preist and nun in the family. The leader of their Irish-Catholic, you could almost say cult, is the aunt of Draper Doyle (the young child). She is the most nauseating character I have yet to come across. She is filled with Hipocrisy and all the things that she is against. She also threatens the safty of Draper Doyle's newly widowed mother. Their entire future depends on Draper Doyle's recognization of his nightmares which cause him unbelievable embarassment in the face of his relative. His only refuge from his devout aunts and uncles is his uncle reginald who is one of the most endearing and genuinly funny characters I have come across. This book is fantasticly written (unlike this review, I have need of spell check) and keeps your attention from one paragraph to the next which is always a Divine thing in a book.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is a terrific read; great characters and very funny., November 8, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Divine Ryans (Mass Market Paperback)

If you are Canadian, know anything about hockey or love oddball families, you will enjoy this book. It is the touching story of the Ryan's, a Catholic family in Newfoundland who run the local Catholic newspaper. The trials and secrets of this lovely bunch of nuts, as seen through the eyes of their youngest member, is a truly memorable story.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Great Canadian author, September 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Divine Ryans (Paperback)

This book was pure enjoyment. A great read and never disappointing. Very different from Colony of Unrequieted Dreams. I feel as I have found an author that I will able to follow for years to come.