Around this time list year, I was waxing lyrical about McInerney’s perfectly titled debut novel ‘The Glorious Heresies.’  The book rightly won the 2016 Baileys Prize and now its sequel, ‘The Blood Miracles’, has come out just in time to be read before I jump into my 2017 shortlist readings.

‘The Glorious Heresies’ was a madcap and surprisingly poignant romp through Cork’s squalid underlife.  Amongst the mayhem of plot lines and numerous protagonists, it was grounded by the coming of age story of young Ryan Cusack.  Caught up in the madness of everything around him, Ryan’s attempts to grow up and find his place in the world were highlights in an already dazzling debut.

‘The Blood Miracles’ picks up Ryan’s story a few years later.  He’s now in his twenties and, poor soul, has benefitted little from the passing of time.  Potentially suicidal and consistently self-destructive, Ryan works as an enforcer, translator, seller and surrogate son for a small-time crime lord who wants to expand his operations.  His secret talents for music, languages and tenderness that shone through ‘The Glorious Heresies’ have become bitter obsessions, constantly returned to as Ryan tries to reconcile his depressed present with his promising past.

Previous events are referred to throughout ‘The Blood Miracles’, but don’t be mislead, McInerney has produced a very different book for her second novel.  ‘The Glorious Heresies’ was a frenetic view of a city with a past that was catching up with it and a present that was swirling out of control.  Despite references to previous events, ‘The Blood Miracles’ exists in a different world, a different genre.  Instead of being a novel of the city with moments of laugh-out-loud comedy and heart-rending pathos, it’s a tangled crime story about drug dealers, their multiple girlfriends and their confused loyalties.  There are double-crossings, stunning coincidences, exotic locations, madonnas, whores and lots of drug and nightclub scenes.  The characters are depressingly realistic, but evoked without the sparkle and humour I had been looking forward to.  As this review shows, I’m still actually far more interested in ‘The Glorious Heresies’ than in its sequel; it’s frustrating to find yourself constantly wanting to re-read an earlier book by an author when you’re trying to enjoy the new one.

I’m intrigued to see what McInerney writes next.  I’m hoping of course for a return to the shocking splendour of ‘The Glorious Heresies, but ‘The Blood Miracles’ has shown that she has a interest in other genres – and also that she can write books extremely quickly.  Who knows, there may be another Cork-set Women’s Prize contender in 2018…

I absolutely loved Inglorious Heresies and started Blood Miracles hoping it would be just as good.
Blood Miracles is dubbed a follow up to Inglorious Heresies, featuring many of the same characters, and continuing the story of young Ryan Cusak. That said, there is no need to have read the first book.
Ryan Cusak is now involved with Dan, using his knowledge of Italian to broker a huge Italian based drugs deal. When the drugs go missing master criminal Phelan becomes involved and Cusak is forced to assist Phelan track them down. Allegiances are betrayed, relationships tested to the limit and events slowly build to an electrifying conclusion.
Yes, this is a novel about the criminal underworld but it is just a backdrop, a device used to showcase Ryan and his struggles and dilemmas. Ryan is not your average criminal, Ryan is a character who is continually questioning why he is involved, what consequences it has for his relationship with long term girlfriend Karine and his inability to break free and live a normal life. 
This is what I love about McInerney's novels, her characters are angst ridden, deep and multi dimensional. I was constantly willing Ryan to find a way out to break free and live the life that he wants.
The plot was complicated with a myriad of twists and turns along the way, but this did not detract and merely added to the tension and drama.
Blood Miracles is a worthy follow up, addictive, thrilling and just as good as Inglorious Heresies.
Thank you to Netgalley and John Murray for the opportunity to read and review.

I enjoyed The Glorious Heresies very much so it pains me to say this, but I got to about half-way in The Blood Miracles and gave up.  I may go back to it at some point, but for now I've had enough.

The Blood Miracles picks up Ryan Cusack's story from the end of The Glorious Heresies.  After a sort of recuperation period he is back at work with Dan, organising a new drug route from the Camorra in Naples.  He continues to drink and use drugs, so his life continues as a series of mess-ups (not the exact phrase used in the narrative) and dealings with dangerous people as things fall apart with Karine…and so on.

Lisa McInerney writes as well as in the first book, but I needed more that The Blood Miracles offers, I'm afraid.  There is no leaven this time of comedy or humanity, nor any of the background social commentary; it's just a long, bleak slog of Ryan messing up, getting into trouble, allowing his addictions to spoil things, and so on.  It's a convincing portrait, but we've already had that, better done, in The Glorious Heresies and in the end I simply couldn’t find a reason to carry on reading.

Lisa McInerney is a very good writer and I am genuinely sorry to have to be critical of this book, but it really fell a long way short of what I would expect from her and I can't recommend it.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

I picked up Lisa McInerney’s debut The Glorious Heresies a few days after it was published based on the utterly brilliant cover. Shallow I know, but there you have it. Colourful graffitied Virgin Mary, glowing praise from Kevin Barry, and a blurb setting up a dark comedy realistically set in post-crash, post-Catholic Ireland – all these things were catnip to me. After practically inhaling it and pressing it on everyone who asked me for book recommendations (and many who didn’t!) I was totally convinced of McInerney’s talent. I wasn’t a bit surprised when word-of-mouth snowballed and the justified awards started rolling in. The downside of this was I awaited her next novel with Big Expectations.

“This, like so many of Ryan Cusack’s f**k-ups, begins with ecstasy”

I didn’t realise until I got my mitts on it that The Blood Miracles is a sequel of sorts – it features some of the characters from The Glorious Heresies, but works as a standalone novel also. Rather than the multiple narratives of the first book, The Blood Miracles focuses on Ryan Cusack – a half-Corkonian half- Neapolitan drug dealer, whose sociopathic boss has decided to use him to open a new black market route between Ireland and Italy. This aspect of the story could be described as ‘Love/Hate in Cork’- although infinitely better, there is the same addictive danger that made that RTE series so popular. There are enough alliances and complex transactions to keep any reader guessing, and the action comes thick and fast.

Ryan is perfectly portrayed – he is highly intelligent, complex and somehow poetic, and there is a simple tragedy in how his circumstance have led him down the path of crime. The one light in his life, his beloved girlfriend Karine, is beginning to think he is a lost cause and he is a man on a precipice…Torn between two places, two worlds, two versions of himself, it is a pleasure to watch Ryan navigate through riotous scenes of violence, clubbing, drugs, crime and sex.  All of McInerney’s characters are skilled at spinning gold into straw – Ryan is particularly good at making a hames of things, and it makes for very good reading. This is a different beast to Heresies – the focus is tighter, and it is less funny – but it is no less worthwhile (and this is from one who went in with Big Expectations). Read this one now so you can say you have when it starts showing up on award shortlists later in the year!

It's so intriguing coming to “The Blood Miracles” after reading Lisa McInerney's rhapsodic debut “The Glorious Heresies” about the lives of several disparate individuals in modern day Cork. This new book is a continuation of that story, but she narrows the focus onto Ryan who we first met as a teenager with his longterm girlfriend Karine. Ryan's initial involvement working for drug dealer Dan has morphed into becoming a key player in Dan's gangster circle. But these aren't the kind of modern gangsters portrayed in The Sopranos (as Ryan quite clearly states at one point.) I don't think it's necessary to have read “The Glorious Heresies” before reading this new book as Ryan's past and current situation are quite clearly explained at the beginning. However, it's interesting for me having first read McInerney's writing in her short story 'Berghain' from the anthology “The Long Gaze Back.” The style of this new novel more closely resembles that initial story. It captures the heady atmosphere of a young group of working class Irish men and women struggling to find their place in an economically-strained society. McInerney is particularly adept at portraying this conflict in her hero Ryan who finds himself at a crisis point in this novel without any strong role models or institutional support to guide him.

Ryan is just turning twenty-one and considering important decisions about which direction his life will take. His passion and talent is for making music, but dealing drugs is so lucrative it's hard to resist. Plus he's so ensconced in Dan's circle that it's difficult to safely get out, especially now that Dan is planning on channeling a new form of ecstasy or “yokes” from Italy which will make them all big players in the underworld. Ryan relationship with Karine has also turned very rocky, especially after he becomes enamoured with a charismatic new girl named Natalie. Things start to go badly wrong and Ryan finds himself caught between warring gangs and girlfriends.

Amidst his journey through these conflicts Ryan continuously thinks about his lost mother and persists in keeping an internal dialogue with her which is marked in italics. This is rendered in a way which is deeply poignant: “I was hungry but the hunger felt right. I needed to miss you more than I needed to eat.” Her absence is intensely felt as he's desperately in need of some guidance. Although he knows what he wants to do in life he finds himself drawn into self-destructive behaviour: “It does not escape his notice that he was set for something other than this, that his mother had laid such foundations. Instead of playing and composing on piano Ryan does it on a monitor; instead of practicing he is out on the lash.” He finds himself pulled deeper into self-destructive patterns of behaviour and dangerous circles which are increasingly difficult to extricate himself from.

Although Ryan's internal struggle is movingly rendered, the dialogue-heavy scenes where he bounces between different factions of the gangs and the women he's involved with become a bit strained. The arguments he has with these different parties are realistic, but they start to feel too circular. The stakes increase with a new stream of pills coming from Italy and there's a high level of paranoia within Ryan's gangster circle when things start to go wrong. But the dramatic urgency of this crisis where Ryan fears for his life begins to wane when things don't change or progress fast enough. Something about the thrust of the story feels lost when it's stretched out so far – whereas I think it would have kept its tension if it were just one part of a multi-threaded panoramic view of Cork-life as rendered in “The Glorious Heresies.”  However, excitement really builds when "The Blood Miracles" reaches its climax.

Ryan is a compelling character filled with good-hearted flaws who often makes bad decisions. He's at his most endearing when his best intentions lead to nothing so you can feel and relate to the frustration of his struggle: “You talk enough and soon enough none of it matters; it’s all just words, pauses, silence-and-sound.” As a big fan of “The Glorious Heresies” it's also interesting to see how central characters from the first novel such as Ryan's father Tony, gangster boss Jimmy and Maureen re-enter the story. It'll be fascinating to see how McInerney develops the characters and story further in the planned third novel in this trilogy.

‘This city, like all cities, hates its natives. It would rather be in a constant state of replenishment than own up to what it has warped. Ryan sees it well enough: the tribes in town, hipster baristas and skinny suits and the tides of students pushing the rest of them back up the hills.’

Let me start by saying that I was a huge fan of Lisa McInerney’s debut The Glorious Heresies. Back in 2015, this book grabbed everyone’s attention and took the literary world by storm. The following year saw awarding of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Desmond Elliott Prize add to the furore of a remarkable debut. To say that I came to The Blood Miracles with high expectations is an understatement.

And here is where we get to the problem with expectations… You start a book expecting more of the same and then you become disorientated when you discover that the author has other plans for you! As I began reading The Blood Miracles, it quickly became evident that McInerney had not written an easy by-the-numbers sequel to piggyback on to her previous success. Instead, she took her dark world in a slightly different direction and changed the perspective. You have to admire her greatly for this. The end result is both a satisfying sequel (which is important for her loyal readers) and a fantastic book capable of standing alone in it’s own right.

Cork City once again makes an excellent setting in Lisa McInerney’s The Blood Miracles.
The Blood Miracles sees us climb deep inside the head of 20-year-old tearaway Ryan Cusack, ‘the assemblage of seven years of wrongdoings.‘ Whereas in her previous novel, the reader was treated to multiple narratives, this time we get the story of Cork’s cutthroat underworld solely from Ryan’s perspective. Yes, the devoted fan will keen for the quirky characters of old, but rest assured that these favourites do appear all in good time.

In the meantime, we discover that Ryan is not in a good place mentally at all. A couple of half-baked suicide attempts have left him in limbo. His long term girlfriend Karine is fed up of his moods, his dad Tony is a broken man and his boss Dan Kane is relentless in both his own personal ambitions and his dark designs for Ryan. All Ryan wants to do at times is ‘remove his head, place it on a shelf, throw a towel over it.’ But unfortunately there are no moments of peace and lurking all the while in the background is the malevolent shadow of crime kingpin J.P. Phelan.

From this starting point, McInerney’s weaves a deliciously intricate tale of misfortune remnant of Henry Hill’s busy day in Goodfellas. Poor Ryan cannot seem to catch a break and the walls seem to be closing in on him whichever direction he turns.

Once again, McInerney amazes with her swift turn of phrase and use of the vernacular. The sprinklings of Cork city slang add real flavour to this story and also give it a chilling authenticity. With rumours of a third and final instalment to this story, as well as the option of a TV series, I have a strong feeling that this will not be the last time that we hear from Ireland’s ‘Rebel County.’

Would I recommend this book to a friend?

Yes. This is a real slow burning crime novel that tightens the screw of the plot the more that you read. This will result in a couple of late nights reading as you endeavour to see how it all ends. Another excellent book from an emerging author at the top of her game. I look forward to seeing where her next novel goes.

There’s a very good review of this on Goodreads by MisterHobgoblin. He says “All The Blood Miracles does is to cheapen the memory of The Glorious Heresies by flattening the original characters and dumbing down the original intrigue.” I couldn’t agree more. I loved The Glorious Heresies – (and incidentally I do think you need to read that one first as there’s so much backstory referred to in this 2nd part that doesn’t really make sense unless you know whence it derives) – which I felt was bold, original and perceptive, and showed a real empathy for and understanding of the characters and a real insight into how life can so easily go wrong. Ryan Cusack, the protagonist of both novels, had something very special about him that made this reader at least fall a bit in love with him. But now he’s becomes a self-destructive and stupid druggie and criminal, somehow mixed up with the Camorra (OK, I know he’s half-Italian but even so….) in thrall to 2 dodgy characters who simply come across as comic book villains rather than the well-rounded characters they were in the earlier book and all Ryan does here is take drugs, have sex, get beaten up and go to nightclubs. Boring. No exploration of character, no subtlety, no depth, no humour – and the humour was such an integral part of the first book along with the tragedy. What a disappointment. The book managed to keep me reading because by this time I’m invested in Ryan, but I lost the sympathy that had built up in The Glorious Heresies and here just wanted to slap him.

The Glorious Heresies was such a great book, I didn't think Lisa McInerney could match it, but she has!

Set a few years after the first book, the focus is on Ryan with only his narrative this time around. Torn between his dealing and girlfriend Karine, Ryan is a wonderfully written, interesting character. 

The Blood Miracles is more of a thriller than The Glorious Heresies, but this is a good thing. A continued narrative on Ireland's dark side would have lessened the beauty of TGH. 

I would highly recommend this book, but only after reading The Glorious Heresies, which is a must read.

Well, they say lightning never strikes twice but Lisa McInerney has proved them wrong with The Blood Miracles! 

Following on from her Bailey's Prize award-winning The Glorious Heresies, Lisa returns to the world she created in her extraordinary debut, to follow the struggles of Ryan, the young lad from the first book who' made a name for himself as an emerging drug dealer, only to find himself dragged into a terrible dispute between his father and local kingpin, Jimmy Phelan, 

When I realised Lisa was going back to Cork, back to her characters and lives of those who survive in the margins of society, tangled up in crime and gangs, and suffering at the hands of government austerity and Catholic corruption, my first thought was, 'oh, that's high risk.' The Glorious Heresies was nigh-on perfect. More than that, actually, it felt radical. Bold and unapologetic. I feared that something could be lost be returning. So, it's one hell of an achievement that not only has nothing been lost, but also something new has been found.

In The Blood Miracles, we're a few years on from The Glorious Heresies. That plot is done and dusted, and is only mentioned in periphery. Further, few of those characters make a reappearance. There's also no attempt to create a new ensemble piece, where a myriad of lives interweave. Instead, we follow Ryan, his ties to drugs and crime far tighter, through a messed up drugs deal that not only threatens his dreams of leaving Cork and crime behind for good, but also his own life.

Lisa's writing is just electric. Her ear for dialogue, her tightly woven plots, her way of mixing both emotional impact and exciting adrenalin rush... She is such a skilled writer. Ryan is fully fleshed out. He's complicated and has been dealt a really shitty hand in life. He's both trying to do the right thing AND he's his own worse enemy. 

But it's this blend of the head and the heart that I loved so much about this book - the drama and excitement of the gangs and the drugs world is taut and pacey, full of high stakes and violence. But then Lisa weaves this in this delicate sub-plot (it's so subtle at first that you don't realise its importance for a bit) as Ryan strikes up an unlikely rapport with an elderly lady who comes to act as a form of mother-figure for this young man whose own mother died many years before. It allows us to grasp the complexity in Ryan, and to feel that there might be a good person deep down in there, under all the damage.

Perhaps this book doesn't have the grand scale of Heresies - the injustice of Catholicism and the treatment of women in Irish history and society is not the subject matter here - but this is a terrific book, nonetheless, and one that I'm going to be recommending widely. Though we're in a familiar world, it's a different book from Lisa's first, but one that is glorious in its own way too.

Having so thoroughly enjoyed Lisa Mcinerney’s debut novel,The Glorious Heresies, which won the Baileys Prize for Fiction in 2016 this was an eagerly anticipated second novel. I was not disappointed. Mcinerney’s bold, grounded writing style once again smacks you across the face. I laughed and cried and cheered on the characters. They’re real people, I know they are. McInerney paints them so well, flawed and yet loveable they couldn’t be anything but real. This book  is different enough from The Glorious Heresies to feel like a new read and yet the character development clearly marks this as a sequel.  I though it was great!

McInerney's sequel did NOT disappoint.  Following the wonderfully absorbing The Glorious Heresies comes Blood Miracles where the reader is taken along a gripping tale of love, betrayal, dirty deals and survival.  I devoured this book within a couple of days.  Ryan is one of the most complex and intriguing characters despite the wonderfully easy prose in which McInerney describes him in.  That is surely a testament to the author's skill.  I cannot wait to read what happens next. 

My full review now up on my blog.

My thanks to Netgalley & John Murray for an ARC.

For me 'The Blood Miracles' is so much better than 'The Glorious Heresies' which is no bad things as the latter is bloody brilliant.

Ryan is now 20 years old and struggling between a good life & an easy life. Higher up in the fold of Dan Kane. Ryan, using his Neapolitan roots, is a go-between to bring a large shipment of pills to Ireland. But when the deal goes bad Dan, high on coke & power, wants answers or war. 

His girlfriend, Karine, is also struggling. Training to become a nurse, she's had enough of the darker side of Ryan's life & wants him out.

After the dual narrative of the first book it was nice to just get Ryan's perspective. His musical creativity & love of piano are constantly being overshadowed by the life of crime he has chosen. 

We do meet some old faces including a favourite of mine, Maureen. I love the relationship between Ryan and her, she is somewhat his saviour.

From the very first line this book will grab you back into the seedy life of Ireland & I loved it.

I really enjoyed this; well structured, well written, and very engaging.

A fast paced novel about the drug underworld in Cork. I enjoyed this book but I kept expecting there to be more to the story.

Disappointment. 

I loved The Glorious Heresies and picked up this follow up with the highest hopes. I wish I hadn't.

Because, the high points for The Glorious Heresies had been the blend of farce and crime; the balance between good people; inept people and bad people; the multiple viewpoints; the contrast between the Celtic Tiger and the organised crime. But these are all missing in The Blood Miracles. It is just a straight story of drug deals. The characters are the same - well some of them reappear, but then they only seem to come in two dimensions. For example, Ryan Cusack had been on the verge of choosing between an honest life and the easy money of crime. He was a gifted pianist with a possible future. But now he has chosen the path of darkness and his life is spent rustling up deals and trying to second guess who might be double crossing him. He bounces constantly between girls' beds and hoods' offices. Back and forth he goes - girl, office, girl, office with the occasional foray into a nightclub. It is boring. 

The boredom is not even relieved by cameo characters, because this is what everyone else is doing. The reader is supposed to care what happens to Ryan, and to care whether he ends up working for PJ or Dan - two identikit villains. And Ryan's dad Tony had been comically hopeless in the first novel, but now he is just deadweight for both Ryan and the plot. 

There is no sense of place, no sense of fun. Really very little to keep the reader turning the repetitive pages. All The Blood Miracles does is to cheapen the memory of The Glorious Heresies by flattening the original characters and dumbing down the original intrigue. 

I hope, for the next outing, Lisa McInerney finds a new story to tell with new people and, perhaps, new places.

Having ready The Glorious Heresies last year, I was really excited to pick up Lisa McInerney's second book, The Blood Miracles, unfortunately I wasn't as taken with this one, as I was with her first. I found both the stories and the characters incredibly hard to sink into, but think maybe at a later date, I might enjoy it more. Having made it half way through, Ive decided to put it down for a bit and revisit at a later date.

A high-energy pace and a narrative style to match as Ryan Cusack is torn between sorting out his head and life with girlfriend Karine, and getting more deeply embroiled with drugs boss Dan Kane and his money-making schemes...

McInerney offers up an anti-tourist board picture of Cork: cynical, corrupt, corrupting and chaotic. In the midst is Ryan, 20 years old, and still not sure who exactly he is, and without ever quite making a decision, finds his life mapped out in a certain way.

This is tough and electric in places but also offers a portrait of youth and uncertainty today - managing to be both effervescent and grubby at once.

Perfect for fans of McInerney's debut, the Bailey's Prize-winning 'The Glorious Heresies,' this follow-up leaves behind the different narrative strands of the first book to focus on Ryan, the young, troubled drug dealer. Other characters from 'TGH' do pop up, so it's helpful to flick through that book in advance as a refresher.
As a big fan of McInerney's first book, I was not disappointed by 'The Blood Miracles'. The gritty world she set up in the first book is maintained here, showing the seedy underbelly of Cork and its criminal population. It's not a world you'd particularly want to live in, but it's absorbing to read about. I really like McInerney's writing style; it's as unflinching here as it was in her first book and, as someone whose reading doesn't usually include this kind of story or setting, I find it really refreshing and vibrant. I definitely recommend this to fans of 'The Glorious Heresies' and, if you haven't got to that book yet, you absolutely should.

I'll start by saying that ,like most who read it, I really enjoyed The Glorious Heresies which followed 15 year old drug dealer Ryan, who has been raised by his alcoholic father after his mother dies tragically, through his encounters with gangsters,prostitutes and other entities that populate McInerney's vividly painted Cork city. This book is a sequel to that so I would advise picking that up first before reading this one.
So are we faced with difficult second album syndrome after her critically acclaimed debut?

Her gift of instantly hooking a reader is still there no question. The book opens with a great line " This, like so many of Ryan Cusack's fuck-ups, begins with ecstasy." Call me Ishmael but with yokes.

Ryan is now 20 and has moved up the ladder and is involved in arranging a shipment of pills from Italy using his ability to speak Italian to facilitate the deal. It's not long before the pills go missing however and his boss Dan Kane, an up and coming gangster fond of cocaine with a thirst for power, wants answers. Will Ryan survive the ensuing peril to life and limb when Jimmy Phelan the Don of Cork get's involved?

As in the first book probably the best thing about it is the relationship between Ryan and his girlfriend Karine who is studying to be a nurse. She writes characters that you care about and their relationship that's troubled but has love at the heart of it rings true. Their flaws and humanity makes them real and you find yourself rooting for them.

In the critical spirit of nit picking I feel I must also point out one or two minor things that didn't work for me . I can't imagine too many couples have ever used the word moratorium in a heated argument and in another scene someone threatens to "run a train" on Ryan..bit American maybe?McInerney doesn't go down the road of exactingly trying to recreate vernacular like say Irvine Welsh. The characters do say "boy" though naturally! That in itself is not a criticism as the dialogue does flow and every character has something interesting to say. 

The characters as I said are ones we root for,there's a part of me though that thinks maybe Ryan could be shown to do worse acts than he does. He's a dealer who ostensibly is making a lot of money and is well regarded by his boss Dan Kane who has a capacity for ruthlessness,but we don't see him in a situation where someone can't or won't pay and how he might have to react maybe making him a slightly less sympathetic character. This is alluded to at one stage but never examined. Again small criticisms that I feel somewhat ridiculous making about such a good writer!

So in short I'd really recommend both of Lisa McInerney's books. I gave this one a 4 but if there were half stars it probably would have been 4.5 as compared to a 5 for the first one. If you're looking for an exciting Irish novelist who doesn't believe in any filler whatsoever in the hectic world she creates then look no further. As readable as anything I've picked up lately.


READING PROGRESS
February 18, 2017 – Finished Reading