The problem with Irish literature is best embodied in the considerable disappointment that is Ridgway’s trajectory, from the promising collision of rural maelstrom and urban inclemency in The Long Falling, to the stuttering but elegant iterations of Standard Time, through the increasingly formless manipulations of The Parts, to his apogee as a sort of unstable distant point of light, possibly approaching but in all likelihood disappearing, in Animals, where he has the temerity to present to us a book about The Condition Of Mankind. News that his next book Hawthorn & Child is set in London – a city Ridgway fled over a year ago – and features two detectives on the trail of a writer, seems to indicate a final disappearance of the author up his own ampersand. As for Ridgway himself he is reported these days to be posing as an alcoholic in a Scottish town where he can be seen throwing himself out of the pub and into the North Sea on a daily basis like a rag around a rock. Though in fairness, these reports come from people who don’t like him. There are no other reports. Perhaps the best thing that can be said about this dismal episode is that it was brief, and hardly anybody noticed.