“After a couple of weeks, I found myself standing outside the voids in the middle of the night listening for human activity, for any sign of life at all. Voids are flats that have been vacated, that will never be lived in again. But there never were any signs of life. Only the wind whistling through vacant interiors.”
In a condemned tower block in Glasgow, residents slowly trickle away until a young man is left alone with only the angels and devils in his mind for company. Stumbling from one surreal situation to the next, he encounters others on the margins of society, finding friendship and camaraderie wherever it is offered, grappling with who he is and what shape his future might take.
The Voids is an unsparing story of modern-day Britain, told with brilliant flashes of humor and humanity.
“Reading The Voids is a sensory experience. There is never a word too much, it never lingers. There is tragedy but no melodrama. O’Connor’s lightness of touch, the pace, economy, characters… are all perfect, all harmonious, poetic, but unadorned, even in the blackest of moments. Part of me is still in that high rise or watching the sunlight through the fire exit door at The Satellite. It is beautiful and perfect. I want to say this is a book God would like.” —Paul Buchanan, The Blue Nile
“The Voids is a wild, magical, and magnetically mad picaresque … it had me bellowing with laughter on one page and needing to weep on the next. I tore through it, and it through me. A brilliant debut.”
Niall Griffiths, author of Sheepshagger and Broken Ghost
“Reading The Voids is a sensory experience. There is never a word too much, it never lingers. There is tragedy but no melodrama. O’Connor’s lightness of touch, the pace, economy, characters… are all perfect, all harmonious, poetic, but unadorned, even in the blackest of moments. Part of me is still in that high rise or watching the sunlight through the fire exit door at The Satellite. It is beautiful and perfect. I want to say this is a book God would like.”
Paul Buchanan, The Blue Nile
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“This distinctive debut leaves you wanting to read more from O’Connor.”
Anthony Cummins, The Daily Mail
“Finely written … O’Connor creates a world ex nihilo, showcasing the lives of the forgotten.”
The Irish Times
“An unflinching yet poetic portrait of addiction, this bleak tale is leavened by glimmers of hope and humor.”
Dan Shaw, Happy Mag
“Beautiful, and both explicit and allusive, The Voids is a brave and moving work.”
Penelope Cottier, The Canberra Times
“Scottish author O’Connor delivers a searing and passionate debut from the voice of an angsty young Glaswegian who squats in a mostly abandoned high rise he calls “the voids.” … Readers will be lifted by his protagonist’s commitment to finding beauty in the darkness.”
Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Compelling and well-written … The episodic darkness can be unrelenting at times, but what redeems the material is not only O’Connor’s effortless prose but also his hope for humanity rooted in his surprising optimism.”
June Sawyers, Booklist
“Ryan O'Connor's superb debut treads familiar territory within Scottish fiction, such as Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting and Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain, it is lyrical and poetic, humorous and heartbreaking, unnerving and disorientating … Simply brilliant, and highly recommended.”
Jeremy Delgado
“The prose in Scottish newcomer Ryan O’Connor’s The Voids soars higher than the condemned Glasgow skyscraper in which his solitary protagonist lives, transcending the grungy, grinding plot with brutal lyricism.”
Michael Winkler, Australian Book Review's Books of the Year 2022
“A debut that puts your brain to work! The reading experience was akin to electroconvulsive therapy, exciting my grey matter like never before.”
James Goodall, Yorkshire Times
