We look forward to seeing you on your next visit to the library. Find a location near you.

All We Shall Know: A Novel
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

Book Cover
Average Rating
Published:
Penguin Publishing Group 2017
Status:
Available from OverDrive
Description
A breathtaking and redemptive novel from the award-winning and Booker Prize nominated author Donal Ryan
Melody Shee is alone and in trouble. At 33 years-old, she finds herself pregnant with the child of a 17 year-old Traveller boy, Martin Toppy, and not by her husband Pat. Melody was teaching Martin to read, but now he’s gone, and Pat leaves too, full of rage. She’s trying to stay in the moment, but the future is looming, while the past won’t let her go. It’s a good thing that she meets Mary Crothery when she does. Mary is a bold young Traveller woman, and she knows more about Melody than she lets on. She might just save Melody’s life. 
Following the nine months of her pregnancy, All We Shall Know unfolds with emotional immediacy in Melody’s fierce, funny, and unforgettable voice, as she contends with her choices, past and present.
Also in This Series
Formats
Adobe EPUB eBook
Works on all eReaders (except Kindles), desktop computers and mobile devices with reading apps installed.
Kindle Book
Works on Kindles and devices with a Kindle app installed.
OverDrive Read
Need Help?
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
More Like This
Other Editions and Formats
More Copies In LINK+
Loading LINK+ Copies...
More Details
Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
07/04/2017
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781524704834
ASIN:
B01MXHV7SI
Reviews from GoodReads
Loading GoodReads Reviews.
Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Donal Ryan. (2017). All We Shall Know: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Donal Ryan. 2017. All We Shall Know: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Donal Ryan, All We Shall Know: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group, 2017.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Donal Ryan. All We Shall Know: A Novel. Penguin Publishing Group, 2017.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
Copy Details
LibraryOwnedAvailable
Shared Digital Collection11
Staff View
Grouped Work ID:
db86c363-2081-2fe6-ec02-8c4f1481657f
Go To Grouped Work
Needs Update?:
No
Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 15:14:21
Date Updated:
Dec 06, 2020 02:40:28
Last Metadata Check:
Mar 24, 2024 03:21:40
Last Metadata Change:
Nov 10, 2023 14:18:07
Last Availability Check:
Mar 24, 2024 03:21:44
Last Availability Change:
Feb 25, 2024 14:32:35
Last Grouped Work Modification Time:
Mar 29, 2024 02:17:20

OverDrive Product Record

images
    • cover:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/1523-1/{BB6FD63B-84E3-442A-A142-15B12C7067D6}Img100.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • thumbnail:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/1523-1/{BB6FD63B-84E3-442A-A142-15B12C7067D6}Img200.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover150Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/1523-1/BB6/FD6/3B/{BB6FD63B-84E3-442A-A142-15B12C7067D6}Img150.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover300Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/1523-1/BB6/FD6/3B/{BB6FD63B-84E3-442A-A142-15B12C7067D6}Img400.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
formats
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9781524704834
      • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
      • id: ebook-epub-adobe
      • identifiers:
            • type: ASIN
            • value: B01MXHV7SI
      • name: Kindle Book
      • id: ebook-kindle
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9781524704834
      • name: OverDrive Read
      • id: ebook-overdrive
mediaType
eBook
primaryCreator
    • role: Author
    • name: Donal Ryan
title
All We Shall Know
dateAdded
2017-07-20T18:11:00-04:00
contentDetails
      • href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=3033890
      • type: text/html
      • account:
          • name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
          • id: 1151
sortTitle
All We Shall Know A Novel
crossRefId
3033890
subtitle
A Novel
id
bb6fd63b-84e3-442a-a142-15b12c7067d6
starRating
4

OverDrive MetaData

isPublicDomain
False
formats
      • fileName: AllWeShallKnow_9781524704834_3033890
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 986286
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9781524704834
      • rights:
            • type: Copying
            • value: 0
            • type: Printing
            • value: 0
            • type: Lending
            • value: 0
            • type: ReadAloud
            • value: 0
            • type: ExpirationRights
            • value: 0
      • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-epub-adobe
      • onSaleDate: 7/4/2017
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=bb6fd63b-84e3-442a-a142-15b12c7067d6&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
      • fileName: AllWeShallKnow_3033890
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 0
      • identifiers:
            • type: ASIN
            • value: B01MXHV7SI
      • name: Kindle Book
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-kindle
      • onSaleDate: 7/4/2017
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=bb6fd63b-84e3-442a-a142-15b12c7067d6&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
      • fileName: AllWeShallKnow_9781524704834_3033890
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 986322
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9781524704834
      • name: OverDrive Read
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-overdrive
      • onSaleDate: 7/4/2017
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=bb6fd63b-84e3-442a-a142-15b12c7067d6&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
keywords
      • value: family
      • value: relationships
      • value: 21st century
      • value: literary fiction
      • value: romance
      • value: British
      • value: Fiction
      • value: novels
      • value: marriage
      • value: Identity
      • value: women
      • value: 20th Century
      • value: Short Stories
      • value: pregnancy
      • value: memory
      • value: Drama
      • value: Women's Fiction
      • value: Ireland
      • value: grief
      • value: betrayal
      • value: irish
      • value: adultery
      • value: traveler
      • value: infidelity
      • value: affair
      • value: literature
      • value: fiction books
      • value: Literary
      • value: tinker
      • value: booker
      • value: books for women
      • value: best selling books for women
      • value: gifts for women
      • value: gifts for her
      • value: good books for women
      • value: realistic fiction books
      • value: women gifts
      • value: books fiction
      • value: books for women best sellers
      • value: novels for women best sellers
creators
      • role: Author
      • fileAs: Ryan, Donal
      • name: Donal Ryan
imprint
Penguin Books
publishDate
2017-07-04T00:00:00-04:00
isOwnedByCollections
True
title
All We Shall Know
fullDescription
A breathtaking and redemptive novel from the award-winning and Booker Prize nominated author Donal Ryan
Melody Shee is alone and in trouble. At 33 years-old, she finds herself pregnant with the child of a 17 year-old Traveller boy, Martin Toppy, and not by her husband Pat. Melody was teaching Martin to read, but now he’s gone, and Pat leaves too, full of rage. She’s trying to stay in the moment, but the future is looming, while the past won’t let her go. It’s a good thing that she meets Mary Crothery when she does. Mary is a bold young Traveller woman, and she knows more about Melody than she lets on. She might just save Melody’s life. 
Following the nine months of her pregnancy, All We Shall Know unfolds with emotional immediacy in Melody’s fierce, funny, and unforgettable voice, as she contends with her choices, past and present.
reviews
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        May 22, 2017
        Ryan (The Spinning Heart) crafts a beautiful morality play that recalls the pastoral dramas of William Trevor or Edna O’Brien. When we first meet Melody Shee, she is 33 years old and 12 weeks pregnant by a 17-year-old Irish Traveller named Martin Toppy; now, deserted by her husband, Pat, and with Martin nowhere to be found, Melody is left alone to contemplate her shame and her unborn child, even as “dying seems as unreasonable as living.” But her spirits are revitalized by a friendship kindled in the Travellers’ camps: 19-year-old Mary Crothery, a free spirit who “speaks in streams” and whose own scandalous divorce has triggered a vicious feud. Scorned by their respective communities, these two women come to rely on one another and save each other’s lives in unforeseen ways. But as Melody nears her due date, she recalls another betrayal, that of a childhood friend, and wonders whether she is “a woman divorced from decency, without restraint,” destined to fall short of all who love her. In this story of moral redemption and blood rivalries, Ryan is fair to each of his characters, as well as vivid in his evocation of Traveller culture. The result is a lush and lively novel that fascinates from its opening words to its tender last lines.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        Starred review from May 15, 2017
        Set in contemporary Ireland, this is a novel of self-sacrifice, penance, and circumscribed possibilities for happiness, narrated with great compassion and written with elegant lyricism.At the age of 33, Melody Shee finds herself pregnant and under a moral cloud. The father of her child is not Pat, her husband of a decade, but rather Martin Toppy, a 17-year-old she had been tutoring. Martin is a Traveller, a member of an ethnic group similar to though distinct from the Roma, and the Traveller subculture plays a major and fascinating role in the novel. Travellers tend to set themselves apart from the larger community, and their children are often not integrated into the educational system--hence the need for people like Melody who can tutor them. Enraged by Melody's infidelity, not least because their own relationship had yielded only miscarriages, Pat leaves home, and Martin soon disappears as well. Ryan structures each chapter as a week in Melody's pregnancy, beginning with week 12 and ending with the birth of her son and a postpartum grace note. Melody narrates the novel, and her consciousness is at its core as she moves from despair and suicidal thoughts to guilt and the need for penance to self-acceptance and a willingness to put others' needs ahead of her own. Desperate for emotional support during this grueling time, Melody turns to Mary Crothery, a young Traveller woman with whom she develops an intense and quasi-romantic relationship. Mary and her family are deeply involved in Traveller power struggles, and her engagement in these affairs results in violence and blood vengeance. Throughout the term of Melody's pregnancy, Mary remains stalwart, and having her nearby gives Melody someone to care for. Mary's presence also gives Melody an opportunity for a form of displaced penance for something that happened when she was a teenager. We learn through flashbacks that Melody's best friend, Breedie Flynn, committed suicide when Melody and others turned against her during a volatile time, and Melody hopes to atone for her mistreatment of Breedie by nurturing Mary. Emotionally intense, deeply engaging, and profound.

        COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        June 1, 2017
        Melody Shee is problematically pregnant. The father of her unborn child isn't her husband and former high-school sweetheart, Pat, with whom she's suffered miscarriages of much-wanted pregnancies, but a boy of actual high-school age. For a year, Melody tutored 17-year-old Martin Toppy, from a family of nomadic, native Irish Travellers. Then, after their tryst, Martin and his family left the caravan site where they lived in Melody's small town. In seeking him, Melody meets Mary Crothery, a young woman who knows him. As Melody's marriage falls apart, her pregnancy progresses, and painful memories of losses and regrets fizz up to the surface, she takes easily to caring for Mary, who is a shame to her family with a broken marriage of her own. Ryan (The Thing about December, 2014) follows Melody along the mysterious, changing trails of her memories as she tries, with considerable effort, to somehow right her life while giving truth and depth to her feelings of anger, guilt, mourning, and the love, ever complicated, that's hardest to give herself.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        March 1, 2017

        At 33, Melody Shee is pregnant--not by husband Pat but by the 17-year-old Traveller boy she had been teaching to read. Now she's alone with only Traveller girl Mary for help. From the author of The Spinning Heart, long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and winner of the Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards.

        Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

popularity
251
links
    • self:
        • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/bb6fd63b-84e3-442a-a142-15b12c7067d6/metadata
        • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
id
bb6fd63b-84e3-442a-a142-15b12c7067d6
starRating
4.2
images
    • cover:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/1523-1/{BB6FD63B-84E3-442A-A142-15B12C7067D6}Img100.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • thumbnail:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/1523-1/{BB6FD63B-84E3-442A-A142-15B12C7067D6}Img200.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover150Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/1523-1/BB6/FD6/3B/{BB6FD63B-84E3-442A-A142-15B12C7067D6}Img150.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover300Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/1523-1/BB6/FD6/3B/{BB6FD63B-84E3-442A-A142-15B12C7067D6}Img400.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
isPublicPerformanceAllowed
False
languages
      • code: en
      • name: English
subjects
      • value: Fiction
      • value: Literature
publishDateText
07/04/2017
otherFormatIdentifiers
      • type: ISBN
      • value: 9780143131045
mediaType
eBook
shortDescription
A breathtaking and redemptive novel from the award-winning and Booker Prize nominated author Donal Ryan
Melody Shee is alone and in trouble. At 33 years-old, she finds herself pregnant with the child of a 17 year-old Traveller boy, Martin Toppy, and not by her husband Pat. Melody was teaching Martin to read, but now he’s gone, and Pat leaves too, full of rage. She’s trying to stay in the moment, but the future is looming, while the past won’t let her go. It’s a good thing that she meets Mary Crothery when she does. Mary is a bold young Traveller woman, and she knows more about Melody than she lets on. She might just save Melody’s life. 
Following the nine months of her pregnancy, All We Shall Know unfolds with emotional immediacy in Melody’s fierce, funny, and unforgettable voice, as she contends with her choices, past and present.
sortTitle
All We Shall Know A Novel
crossRefId
3033890
subtitle
A Novel
publisher
Penguin Publishing Group
bisacCodes
      • code: FIC019000
      • description: Fiction / Literary
      • code: FIC044000
      • description: Fiction / Contemporary Women
      • code: FIC045000
      • description: Fiction / Family Life / General