SOURCE: Review of The Long Falling, in Observer, March 8, 1998, p. 17.

[In the following review, Patterson notes the narrative voice, imagery, symbolism and warnings of hypocrisy in The Long Falling, but is leery of Ridgway's attempt to "link" the "disparate worlds" of old Irish tradition and new Irish freedom.]

It is not unusual for novels set in rural Ireland to depict drunken, violent, abusive husbands, but it is perhaps less common for the wife on the receiving end of such treatment to retaliate with murder. This is precisely what happens in Keith Ridgway's first novel, The Long Falling, and it's an act of apparent liberation that inevitably becomes a prison of its own.

From the opening descriptions on the first page of The Long Falling, it is clear that there is no room here for nostalgic notions of an Emerald Isle full of rosy-faced country folk in tune with...