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Sudden Times
Ollie Ewing is barely surviving.
Back home in Sligo, he's collecting trolleys in a supermarket car park and living in a run-down house with a group of art students. He has lost his child-like innocence and he can't escape what has happened in London. Tormented by old fears and regrets, he loses himself in everyday routine and is kept going by his painfully black sense of humour.
Finally, Ollie steels himself to return to England to confront his demons. He re-enters a world of casual labour and protection rackets on the building sites of London; a world peopled by sinister figures such as Silver John and Scots Bob; an intimidating world of uncertain justice where violence will easily erupt.
Sudden Times is a powerful and shocking psychological thriller, revealing its truth through a growing awareness of the skewed and unreliable consciousness of its narrator. The result is a masterpiece of sustained tension.
Back home in Sligo, he's collecting trolleys in a supermarket car park and living in a run-down house with a group of art students. He has lost his child-like innocence and he can't escape what has happened in London. Tormented by old fears and regrets, he loses himself in everyday routine and is kept going by his painfully black sense of humour.
Finally, Ollie steels himself to return to England to confront his demons. He re-enters a world of casual labour and protection rackets on the building sites of London; a world peopled by sinister figures such as Silver John and Scots Bob; an intimidating world of uncertain justice where violence will easily erupt.
Sudden Times is a powerful and shocking psychological thriller, revealing its truth through a growing awareness of the skewed and unreliable consciousness of its narrator. The result is a masterpiece of sustained tension.
341 pages, Paperback
First published September 23, 1999
8 people are currently reading
153 people want to read
About the author
Dermot Healy
34 books41 followersDermot Healy (born 1947 in Finnea, County Westmeath, Ireland) was an Irish novelist, playwright and poet. He won the Hennessy Award (1974 and 1976), the Tom Gallon Award (1983), and the Encore Award (1995). In 2011, he was shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award for his poetry collection, A Fool's Errand.
Healy was a member of Aosdána and of its governing body, the Toscaireacht, and lived in County Sligo, Ireland.
Healy was a member of Aosdána and of its governing body, the Toscaireacht, and lived in County Sligo, Ireland.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
December 17, 2010
I’ve been away from reading literature for a while apart from some poetry, Wallace Stevens and the like; I’ve been reading philosophy instead, and – as has happened in my life before – felt a distaste for literature and its accoutrements. My return was prompted by somebody slipping me a copy of this novel after having extolled Healy for a year. I read it in 24 hours and loved it. I’m certainly on my way to reading more of the Irishman, and want to retain some initial responses at this stage, and concentrate upon his formal elegance. I think too that a complete appraisal of the novel would require close attention to its narratives and hence retelling the story.
What may be said, however, is that there are two distinct narratives. You can think of all ‘flashbacks’ as being intertwined with the present but here there is something more complex going on. The book is ghosted from the protagonist’s mind wherein the narratives of self and identity shift and vaporise, where stability is unattainable, and memory is perception is memory. One is brought close into unease and it would be tempting for the overly sensitive reader to locate the instabilities within some secure classificatory scheme of pathologies such as paranoia, schizotypical or psychotic anxiety. A differently sensitive reader may share the prismatic dislocation of reality.
That ‘reality’ is of place, of relationships, of self incorporating all contingencies, and a removal of privileged perspective. At a naturalistic level the novel is largely set in shabby urban backroads, much on building sites, temporary structures, wastegrounds; signs predominate: shop signs, warning notices, advertisements; these sharply quotidian images are as fragmented as their counterparts in ‘mind’. The geography of the city becomes as a text or palimpsest, upon which the protagonist moves or reads for meaning, carrying his bare necessities, but carrying too the mazeways or palimpsests of the accidents and contingencies that thicken to weight the apprehension of some destiny beyond his control.
One is deeply sympathetic to this wanderer, an innocent abroad enmeshed by circumstance. Loss is stark and brutal (there is some grotesque imagery in the novel, yet this too is seen refracted, not, as it were, full on; certainly there is no appeal to sentimental or stock response techniques to evole cheap horror) To some extent as the meshes and webs thicken and stick, response becomes numbed, muted, autistic, conventional. Relating to an other human being – full on – proves, after all, to be one of the most difficult tasks that face us.
Appropriately, there are several minor narrative discourses sliding over each other. In particular, a court room cross examination ironically represents transparent naturalism only to reveal itself in every sentence as an absurd distortion of the truth. On this last piece of theatre, language is seen as crucial to the form of the novel. The shadows, fantasies, surreal elements of the protagonist’s encounter with the (imagined reality of) a ‘world out there’, have no words, no public, off the shelf, conventional containers of expression to shape feelings and perceptions. That there is no such thing as a private language is shown to be horribly true; in the outer theatre, it is the wrong word said at the wrong time which causes so much tragedy. Words are devestating. There is always the implication of a slippery disjunction between expressed language and what was thought, or what was nearly said, or what one wished one hadn’t said, or, most devestating of all, between what was said as a mere necessity to say something while knowing that there were no words that could be said.
It would be good if we could read stories not in serial time but absorb them all at once, like a dream. What we can see taking this book as far as we are able as a whole is that it’s a powerful portrait, frozen like an image on the other side of a window, of a mind, of a human being, whose past narrative and present narrative are not only related but are the same. This is a great novel, possibly deserving to be called tragic.
What may be said, however, is that there are two distinct narratives. You can think of all ‘flashbacks’ as being intertwined with the present but here there is something more complex going on. The book is ghosted from the protagonist’s mind wherein the narratives of self and identity shift and vaporise, where stability is unattainable, and memory is perception is memory. One is brought close into unease and it would be tempting for the overly sensitive reader to locate the instabilities within some secure classificatory scheme of pathologies such as paranoia, schizotypical or psychotic anxiety. A differently sensitive reader may share the prismatic dislocation of reality.
That ‘reality’ is of place, of relationships, of self incorporating all contingencies, and a removal of privileged perspective. At a naturalistic level the novel is largely set in shabby urban backroads, much on building sites, temporary structures, wastegrounds; signs predominate: shop signs, warning notices, advertisements; these sharply quotidian images are as fragmented as their counterparts in ‘mind’. The geography of the city becomes as a text or palimpsest, upon which the protagonist moves or reads for meaning, carrying his bare necessities, but carrying too the mazeways or palimpsests of the accidents and contingencies that thicken to weight the apprehension of some destiny beyond his control.
One is deeply sympathetic to this wanderer, an innocent abroad enmeshed by circumstance. Loss is stark and brutal (there is some grotesque imagery in the novel, yet this too is seen refracted, not, as it were, full on; certainly there is no appeal to sentimental or stock response techniques to evole cheap horror) To some extent as the meshes and webs thicken and stick, response becomes numbed, muted, autistic, conventional. Relating to an other human being – full on – proves, after all, to be one of the most difficult tasks that face us.
Appropriately, there are several minor narrative discourses sliding over each other. In particular, a court room cross examination ironically represents transparent naturalism only to reveal itself in every sentence as an absurd distortion of the truth. On this last piece of theatre, language is seen as crucial to the form of the novel. The shadows, fantasies, surreal elements of the protagonist’s encounter with the (imagined reality of) a ‘world out there’, have no words, no public, off the shelf, conventional containers of expression to shape feelings and perceptions. That there is no such thing as a private language is shown to be horribly true; in the outer theatre, it is the wrong word said at the wrong time which causes so much tragedy. Words are devestating. There is always the implication of a slippery disjunction between expressed language and what was thought, or what was nearly said, or what one wished one hadn’t said, or, most devestating of all, between what was said as a mere necessity to say something while knowing that there were no words that could be said.
It would be good if we could read stories not in serial time but absorb them all at once, like a dream. What we can see taking this book as far as we are able as a whole is that it’s a powerful portrait, frozen like an image on the other side of a window, of a mind, of a human being, whose past narrative and present narrative are not only related but are the same. This is a great novel, possibly deserving to be called tragic.
February 24, 2019
Sudden times, one of the characters says. "We live in sudden times." Indeed we do, all of us do, and always will. Everything changes in an instant, in a decision. One critic says that here we "read the implosion of an individual consciousness," and we do. The structure is thoroughly fragmented, which is the perfect choice. Ollie Ewing is as fractured a man as a reader could wish, and in the very first fragment, Ollie says two things that tell us everything yet not enough. He says, "After London it was serious," and "This guilt was stalking me." Ollie in all his wreckage has come home to Sligo, and as he pieces himself together, we try desperately to get ahead of the bits and see where he's going before he gets there, but we never do. The book is that good. The things we imagine aren't it. The real thing is heartbreaking. And sudden.
August 15, 2024
"When will you learn... When will you learn that your actions have consequences?"
July 7, 2018
This is a strange and alluring novel about a young man from Sligo who intends his fortune to try on the old London way (my apologies to Richard Thompson); i.e., he does what a lot of young Irishmen do and goes to England to find work. Once there he gets caught up in a murky mess involving protection rackets, drugs, violence, labor gangs, and all of it related through the haze of the protagonist's shaky hold on reality. It is clear that Ollie Ewing, the anti-hero of the novel, is mentally ill, but it is never clear to what extent or with what. He likes Ry Cooder, so we know he's not all together cracked up, but the veracity of what he experiences is always somewhat questionable. The book demands patience of the reader in much the same way as Joyce, Beckett, or Faulkner do, and as for the reward for patience--ah well, it would spoil it if I copped to that now, wouldn't it? Four stars should tell you enough, and Roddy Doyle's claim that Healy is Ireland's greatest writer might help a wee bit too.
March 19, 2025
Though funny and quite mad and odd at times, I was expecting something different from this book. Ollie has a bad life made worse by poor decisions and his surroundings and his own mind which seems to cause him so much trauma in life. It's a bit confusing and hard to follow. It wasn't not really my thing, but the writing is quite good.
June 4, 2023
Really wonderful book and an amazing and psychedelic experience with Ollie Ewing's misadventures. A little more self enclosed than Goats song but no less beautiful. Will be interested in reading long time, no see.
September 7, 2025
that was the definition of 'harrowing' and absolutely gripping. you'd often hear the cliché that "I couldn't put it down" but in this case I had to leave it down with a strong sigh on. a number of occasions just to recompose myself. definitely worthwhile but tough.
August 23, 2011
I will do a proper review soon - I'm getting behind on reviews, have about 5 to do, been a bit busy lately -
OK, review: Ollie is recovering/recuperating from some traumatic event that happened to him when he worked as a labourer in London. The reader doesn’t know what that is until later so Ollie’s life as a supermarket assistant living with a bunch of art students in a small loft in Sligo has a feel of both home and exile, humorous/whacky -with strange conversations with customers and relationships inside the house - and yet some overall undefined (at this point) sadness and estrangement. Alternately you want to shake him, or put your arm round him. He suffers from hallucination, paranoia and insomnia (lack of sleep has a smell all to itself. It smells arid, like burning, then dank like the smell in an unlived-in room). The novel is broken into little segments with headings (eg ‘ears’, ‘the canal started’) which mirror – I think – the fragmented mind of the hero.
I woke on the wrong side of what goes on normally. I was ashamed of myself and all my doings.
This quote from a scene in a pub gives you a flavour of it:
...a student in marketing who’d just come out of the toilet pocketing the remains of a joint. He sat down at the wrong table, with the solicitors, helped himself to a cigarette and looked round for a light.
Do you mind? He asked.
No.
He met the eye of the man that held the flaming match.
Do I know you?
Just to see.
Yous have changed.
Over the years, laughed the solicitor.
Larry took the light and looked round at the others.
I don’t know. Yous are not the people I was with, he said.
No, said the solicitor.
I thought so. What did you do with them?
We hijacked them.
Good for you, said Larry. Still and all they were nice people.
The action moves abroad to England and his adventures in Coventry/Birmingham with his resentful father are a bit mad, going round pubs looking for someone they end up in one they left earlier because an ‘enemy’ frequented it, but now it was all forgotten. I enjoyed this bit especially because I know the streets and districts he describes very well, and had that ‘deja-vu’ (not really d-v, but you know what I mean) moment where I was reading fiction set in the place I was reading it (coming into New Street station on a train). After this the novel seems to step up a gear in terms of exposition (and terror and nightmare) and we learn about (are gripped by) the racketeering/extortion/protection rackets surrounding the building sites of London, run by gangsters like Silver John, with insights into immigrant working life. The narrative dips into murder and crime and further paranoia and hallucination. Near the end there is a tour de force courtroom scene where every truth spoken by the lawyer is also a lie or distortion, you can see how the precision of his language is just as obscuring as the paranoid voice in Ollie’s head and it becomes apparent just how great a writer Healy is.
Superb but strange, it took this reader a while to adjust to the writer’s style, but it was well worth it in the end.
OK, review: Ollie is recovering/recuperating from some traumatic event that happened to him when he worked as a labourer in London. The reader doesn’t know what that is until later so Ollie’s life as a supermarket assistant living with a bunch of art students in a small loft in Sligo has a feel of both home and exile, humorous/whacky -with strange conversations with customers and relationships inside the house - and yet some overall undefined (at this point) sadness and estrangement. Alternately you want to shake him, or put your arm round him. He suffers from hallucination, paranoia and insomnia (lack of sleep has a smell all to itself. It smells arid, like burning, then dank like the smell in an unlived-in room). The novel is broken into little segments with headings (eg ‘ears’, ‘the canal started’) which mirror – I think – the fragmented mind of the hero.
I woke on the wrong side of what goes on normally. I was ashamed of myself and all my doings.
This quote from a scene in a pub gives you a flavour of it:
...a student in marketing who’d just come out of the toilet pocketing the remains of a joint. He sat down at the wrong table, with the solicitors, helped himself to a cigarette and looked round for a light.
Do you mind? He asked.
No.
He met the eye of the man that held the flaming match.
Do I know you?
Just to see.
Yous have changed.
Over the years, laughed the solicitor.
Larry took the light and looked round at the others.
I don’t know. Yous are not the people I was with, he said.
No, said the solicitor.
I thought so. What did you do with them?
We hijacked them.
Good for you, said Larry. Still and all they were nice people.
The action moves abroad to England and his adventures in Coventry/Birmingham with his resentful father are a bit mad, going round pubs looking for someone they end up in one they left earlier because an ‘enemy’ frequented it, but now it was all forgotten. I enjoyed this bit especially because I know the streets and districts he describes very well, and had that ‘deja-vu’ (not really d-v, but you know what I mean) moment where I was reading fiction set in the place I was reading it (coming into New Street station on a train). After this the novel seems to step up a gear in terms of exposition (and terror and nightmare) and we learn about (are gripped by) the racketeering/extortion/protection rackets surrounding the building sites of London, run by gangsters like Silver John, with insights into immigrant working life. The narrative dips into murder and crime and further paranoia and hallucination. Near the end there is a tour de force courtroom scene where every truth spoken by the lawyer is also a lie or distortion, you can see how the precision of his language is just as obscuring as the paranoid voice in Ollie’s head and it becomes apparent just how great a writer Healy is.
Superb but strange, it took this reader a while to adjust to the writer’s style, but it was well worth it in the end.
August 28, 2012
Ollie is in a world of trouble and by the time the book starts to wind down one begins to wonder if he is going to end up in jail because of the circumstances in which he has been a witness. Life is rough, and even though he is a bystander he's also a victim. He has no security at all, no safety. His father blames him for what happens, his friends, the legal system, even Silver John. I got to the line "Seven years" and thought, well, then, but it didn't matter at all to Ollie. Everything he thought he had wasn't there.
Healy has gotten the voice of madness down, and not the fruit salad of schizophrenia or the dullness of depression but rather the acceptance of "This is the way it is," that most of us fight against for our entire lives.
Hope Ollie finds some joy, some peace.
Healy has gotten the voice of madness down, and not the fruit salad of schizophrenia or the dullness of depression but rather the acceptance of "This is the way it is," that most of us fight against for our entire lives.
Hope Ollie finds some joy, some peace.
December 17, 2011
In terse, idiosynchratic description and idiom laden dialogue, DH plops the reader into the middle of the story, where our anti-hero, an older, shattered, Irish lad, is recovering from unpleasant incedents in London.
Using deceptively simple, blunt sentences, a complex story is revealed quite backwards from middle to resolution to the final part which fills in the details as grasped by the perplexed Ollie.
There were discrepencies, and details that collided. Nothing really resolved and the whole story drenched in paranoia.
There is no reason I loved the reading of this book except for the electric writing style.
Using deceptively simple, blunt sentences, a complex story is revealed quite backwards from middle to resolution to the final part which fills in the details as grasped by the perplexed Ollie.
There were discrepencies, and details that collided. Nothing really resolved and the whole story drenched in paranoia.
There is no reason I loved the reading of this book except for the electric writing style.
February 11, 2021
È una vicenda di giovani immigrati irlandesi a Londra, al giorno d’oggi, ragazzi un po’ balordi, molto disorientati e molto ingenui, che finiscono per ritrovarsi impelagati in una brutta storia di caporalato nei cantieri edili della metropoli. La quarta di copertina lo definisce in modo del tutto incongruo (e spudorato) “un thriller divertente” ma è tutt’altro: una storia intensa e tragica, in cui la verità si fa strada pagina dopo pagina -non senza qualche fatica per il lettore- attraverso i ricordi confusi, il dolore, il panico, gli incubi di un ragazzo che, tornato a Sligo, non sarà mai più quello di prima. Un romanzo che ci racconta ancora una volta la vecchia storia (eppure sempre più attuale) di tanti ragazzi che non trovano al mondo nemmeno un posticino in penombra.
September 13, 2019
This is my first Healy novel and I am very impressed; it has some of the flavour of Kevin Barry but with a dash of Dostoyevsky and a bit of Beckett - which is not to say that it is ultra-intellectual. In fact, the narrative is very compelling and after reading it, I had the urge to read it all again just to solidify the chronological plot. I will definitely be reading more of DH after this little gem.
January 29, 2018
Dermot Healy writes beautifully and has a great ear for dialogue. The story is of a gentle soul haunted by mistakes of the past. I have only recently discovered Healy, but it is clear that he was a gifted writer.
June 19, 2024
i remain a dermot healy stan. this ones so different from the others and im not sure if i agree if it deserves to be better known than A Goat's Song but tbh i dont think any other irish novels are as good as A Goat's Song so could just be biased.
August 12, 2017
Outstanding. The story told in broken conversations and recollections. All about Irish fellas working on the building sites. Very strange. And strangely touching.
December 1, 2017
just ok
better reading it after spending some time in Dublin to be able to get the accents and references. bit of suspense
better reading it after spending some time in Dublin to be able to get the accents and references. bit of suspense
April 29, 2019
Love the way he writes
Read
May 3, 2022I read this ten years ago and barely remember it now. I think it was one of those books I got inveigled into when someone on the Internet told me "This book is GREAT!" It was not. They never are.
December 20, 2024
fabulous, idiosyncratic writing style. Will definitely read more by this author
March 1, 2014
Wow! Such a strong voice. So close to the character, and yet still communicative. The growing sadness I felt for the narrator. His true bewilderment. How do things happen? Appreciation for the details of life that seemed true. Waking up with his father's feet next to his face; the toenails that needed cutting. Very particular use of language. I loved this book. It had the same impact on me as Junot Diaz's, The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
Thank you Dermot, thank you Junot.
Thank you Dermot, thank you Junot.
June 17, 2015
Il voto reale sarebbe tra le tre e le quattro stelline.
Buona ambientazione e storia interessante, ma non ho apprezzato molto lo stile (sia il punto di vista del narratore, che, essendo il protagonista stesso, un po' fuori di testa, è molto confusionario, sia i brevi paragrafi che non seguono un filo narrativo logico ma saltano di palo in frasca).
Buona ambientazione e storia interessante, ma non ho apprezzato molto lo stile (sia il punto di vista del narratore, che, essendo il protagonista stesso, un po' fuori di testa, è molto confusionario, sia i brevi paragrafi che non seguono un filo narrativo logico ma saltano di palo in frasca).
May 28, 2007
I actually think the main reason I liked this book was because I ordered a used copy online from eBay and somehow ended up with a signed edition of the book. For $4. So the general elation of feeling like I got away with something made the reading of the book more enjoyable.
Want to read
July 6, 2016rec. by Larry Zbikowski
June 17, 2011
Excellent book. Very good telling of an hallucinatory and at times hilarious story. Pretty great ending; reads like a charm. Bonus points if you know a damn thing about labour, I guess.
April 4, 2016
this book screams injustice
December 19, 2022
Unreliable narrator… actually unreliable every character.
October 25, 2017
Terrific staccato writing telling a story, backwards, about an Irishman from Sligo struggling with a return home from the corrupt building trade of 1980s London. The story holds great tension and unfolds slowly and deliberately. Darkly comic and powerfully abrupt.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews