37 pages • 1 hour read
Donal RyanThe Spinning Heart
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The Spinning Heart
The titular spinning heart is introduced in Chapter 1:
There’s a red metal heart in the centre of the low front gate, skewered on a rotating hinge. It’s flaking now; the red is nearly gone. It needs to be scraped and sanded and painted and oiled. It still spins in the wind, though. I can hear it creak, creak, creak as I walk away. A flaking, creaking, spinning heart (9).
The other mention is in Chapter 3 when Lily says, “I hear the spinning heart on their gate, creaking slowly around. […] It puts me in mind of my own dry joints; my burning hip, my creaking knees” (31).
Presumably, the spinning heart was once a beautiful gate decoration, with shiny red paint and an effortless spin. However, after years of sitting unattended in the weather, it has succumbed to the effects of time. In the same way, the village was once vibrant—the economy was booming, the people had jobs and money, and there was a sense of hope. However, after the economic crash and the widespread loss of jobs, people have grown weary. The spinning heart reflects the forgotten, small rural village—it’s falling apart at the seams because people are leaving to find work, and the ones who are staying are too impoverished to help themselves.
When Lily hears the creaking as the heart struggles to spin, it reminds her of her own aching body. Lily, like the spinning heart, was once young and beautiful. However, after years of hard living, she is feeling the effects of age. No longer considered youthfully attractive and desired by men, and left alone by her children, she feels isolated and forgotten.
Grief and Loss
The entire town is grieving the loss of Pokey’s construction business, the mainstay of the small village economy. Many of Pokey’s former employees are grieving the loss of their jobs and the loss of their identities that were entwined with their jobs. Many of the women are grieving the loss of various relationships and their expectations for the future. Loss is the central force that connects everyone in the village.
Bobby grieves over his job and his childhood. Growing up, the tensions with Frank sapped the joy from their home, and Bobby can’t escape the repercussions in his adult life: He hates Frank but represses his emotions. He is living with the loss of Frank before Frank even dies because they never had the father-son relationship Bobby desired. Frank lived a similar life with his own father, showing that grief and loss perpetuate throughout the generations.
While each character struggles with a specific loss—whether it’s Lily who misses her estranged children, Bridie who misses her late son, Jason and Seanie who aren’t allowed to see their sons, or Rory and Denis who miss their jobs—the novel’s central plots (the economic collapse and Dylan’s kidnapping) deal with loss. Even the subplots, such as Bobby’s alleged affair and Frank’s murder, are about loss. The novel functions to explore how people cope with grief and loss on individual and communal levels.
Water
In the novel, water symbolizes depression, hopelessness, and death. Before the economic collapse in the small rural village, people seemed to take pride in their town. Afterward, many people flee to larger cities or other countries to find work; and those who stay are resentful of their hometown. Ireland is surrounded by water, and for some of the people who stay, water represents imprisonment and isolation.
Bridie hates water because her young son drowned while on a fishing trip with his uncle. Even though 20 years have passed since the tragedy, she thinks constantly about “the last moments of his little life […] Could he feel the ocean tightening its hand around him?” (68). The ocean has agency, as if it purposefully grabbed the boy and dragged him under. Water, specifically the ocean, is a nefarious force with ill intent.
Seanie shares the story of a group of women in the village who walked out into the lake to commit suicide:
I knew the feeling that drew them down from the mountain to the low, dark lake. There’s a tug from that water. There’s an end in it, under those little waves. Drowning is easy, I’d say. You only have to breathe in a lungful of water and you’re gone, floating away to nothing (96).
The water is again directly associated with death and given agency, as if it’s luring people into its depths.
