Donal Ryan's new novel, *Where Are the Kings*, is a coming-of-age story set in rural Ireland, following 12-year-old Jack as he grapples with adolescence and the traumatic loss of his mother, who took her own life. The Guardian's review situates the book within a wider trend of contemporary fiction preoccupied with distorted or non-linear time, arguing that Ryan's realist novel achieves something similar through its portrayal of grief, which stretches, repeats and collapses ordinary time rather than bending literal reality.

Jack, haunted by memories of chasing his mother's car on his bicycle before she died at a lake, is raised by his mother's family, including stoic grandparents, three uncles and an aunt, while his father Tomáš remains institutionalised. The review highlights the family's evasive, oblique way of discussing the death alongside the warmth and dark humour of their everyday chatter, particularly from Jack's philosophising uncles and blasphemous grandmother, as the novel's central strength amid heavier themes of buried family trauma.