Ghost Mountain

This work once again showcases the creativity and keen insights of the Irish literary landscape! This particular book takes an interesting approach to writing a grand novel with many characters. The very short chapters, surprisingly, brought many positive benefits, at least for me. Whether this was done in the name of art or adapted to modern viewing habits and attention spans is debatable, but it works exceptionally well. You stay focused and even want to read more and faster, because reaching so many chapters gives you a lot of positive reinforcement. This format allows you to catch brief glimpses into the lives of the protagonists, drawing you very close to them and their feelings. You almost feel an emotion for a fleeting moment—born in someone else and transferred to the reader—but only very briefly. The story is carried by the characters; the aforementioned mountain, central to the book, essentially functions only as a focal point where destinies converge. The characters bear the entire weight, and for the reader, they exist in an interplay between insane normality and the utterly normal madness that eventually marks every life. This makes the personalities in this book feel very real and authentic. There isn't much to say about the style, at least the translation is very skillful. The book consistently surprises you with high-class writing and word choice when you least expect it. The book is divided into three parts and deals with the same protagonists but from different perspectives and with different focuses, as it covers different phases of their lives and sometimes includes larger time jumps. This also gives the book more momentum at times, but "unfortunately" the story also needs it, as it would otherwise truly drag in some places. However, this is also somehow part of it, because the life passages of the characters require this dark or sad atmosphere. All in all, it's audaciously but skillfully written and conceived. A refreshing discovery and literature that truly distinguishes itself from the broad, uniform mass. This book certainly does that, and it does it well.