Scar

Dermot Fallon has a disease. Currently hospitalized in Vancouver, he recreates with lunatic clarity the circumstances surrounding his recent trip to Ireland to bury his father, and his own schizophrenic breakdown. Pursued by the past – that of his family and a nation, as well as his own – he in turn pursues Fiona, his cousin’s fiancée, even as reality fragments into nightmare in the tangled tripwires of his brain. Told from Dermot’s own perspective with extensive notes by his psychiatrist, Scar is a powerful meditation on death, love, loss, identity, family and the terrifying ecstasy of madness.

"...A literary-minded schizophrenic with a story to tell dominates Frawley’s complex, multilayered debut novel...Less a novel than a steady stream of hallucinatory imageries, this tale within a tale incorporates aspects from memoir, fiction and speculative fiction genres....Creatively inspired." - Kirkus Reviews

"Ryan Frawley's first novel, Scar, ambitiously sets out to tell not one story, but three or four..a lyric, delicate story written with soulful attention to the lore of the land...... beautifully written, with an obvious knowledge of subject matter and a sensitivity to place, tone and pacing..." - Conium Review

"...destabilising, vibrant, and many-layered. Strains of Irish mythology, psychoanalysis and a sympathetic and immensely close portrait of schizophrenia all somehow gel together with very little friction, to create a compelling and complex puzzle of a book." - Neon Magazine