'The Queen of Dirt Island' captures the bond between women in an Irish family

Donal Ryan's novel, The Queen of Dirt Island, centers its women characters. He tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly that making the men peripheral wasn't his goal – "it just kind of happened." In today's episode, he explains how a childhood spent listening to his grandmother, sister and neighbors in his mom's kitchen inspired the voices in the book, and why he wrote with a strict word count in mind for each chapter.

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