The Divine Ryans (variant printing)

Johnston, Wayne

ISBN 10: 077104447X / ISBN 13: 9780771044472

Published by McClelland & Stewart / M&S, Toronto, 1990

About this Item

Set in St. John's, Newfoundland, in 1967, this is the story of a nine-year-old boy "with a myth-making imagination," and his eccentric family. There seem to be three versions of this title: one with the major typographical error, one correcting that error (which was caught early in the game, making the corrected version by far the most common), and one missing an entire leaf. This is the first of those, containing the major error that was subsequently corrected. Pink cloth w/yellow spine lettering, 233 pages. A hint of wear to corners/spine ends, previous owner's stamp to top right corner of front end paper, in dust jacket w/light edgewear, a hint of sunning to spine, mild rubbing/thin impressions, price neatly cut from front flap. Size: 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall.

Seller Inventory # 017822

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Divine Ryans (variant printing)
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart / M&S, Toronto
• Publication Date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 077104447X
• ISBN 13: 9780771044472
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Marion Stuck (dust jacket illustration)
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Book Type: Book
• Seller catalogs:
  • Humour
  • Canadian Literature

About this title

Synopsis

From the author of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, "An absolute stunner--achingly funny, needle-sharp, and packing an unexpected wallop...the literary equivalent of a small-budget movie masterpiece with heart, soul, and brains"(Time Out).

The Ryans of St. John's, Newfoundland, are a large and deeply eccentric Irish-Catholic family in the dual business of newspaper-publishing and undertaking--"one-hundred years of digging up dirt of one kind or another," as Uncle Reginald puts it. Enough Ryans also become priests and nuns to earn them the sobriquet "Divine."

The youngest member of the family is nine-year-old Draper Doyle Ryan, whose passion for the Catholic Montreal Canadiens in their battles against the Protestant Toronto Maple Leafs is matched only by his perplexity over his recently deceased father's regular reappearances, hockey puck in hand, in the house next door. How he comes to make sense of these visitations, his gently screwy relatives, and his own burgeoning sexuality forms the matter of this droll, wise, and effortlessly funny coming-of-age novel.

Soon to be a major motion picture from the producer of Love and Death on Long Island, and starring Oscar®-nominee Pete Postlethwaite.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

Draper Doyle Ryan is a boy in sixties Newfoundland. His relatives, proudly eccentric and passionately Catholic, run a rather shabby newspaper, a funeral home, a convent and an orphanage. His Uncle Seymour wants to teach him to box and to sing; his Uncle Reginald is giving him therapy sessions twice a week. Draper Doyle just wants to know what's up with these strange dreams he's been having - and why the ghost of his father keeps appearing to him, tossing a hockey puck in the air.