The Failing Heart

The Failing Heart is a dark, surreal tale set in Dublin. Haunted by the death of his mother and the impending birth of his ex-lover's child, a student embarks on an obsessive quest for knowledge. Abandoning his home, running out of money and increasingly paranoid, the people he encounters and the places he inhabits become mysterious sources of terror and anxiety. Everywhere there are intimations of a world that demands to be known, and yet refuses to yield up its secrets. A contemporary fable of existential melancholia, The Failing Heart plunges the reader into the psyche of a tortured individual who is compelled to live a life beyond human comprehension.

Praise for The Failing Heart

‘Brilliant! Dark and atmospheric. It's a compulsive account of how it feels to be tortured and mired in anxiety’ - Sue Leonard, Irish Examiner

‘Reading The Failing Heart is like taking a trip; part escape into another consciousness, part suffocating delusion. The story – or rather the scaffolding upon which Smith displays elegant philosophical architecture – follows a young scholar whose mother has just died […] The writing is self-aware and wry, with rare flashes of humour amid a claustrophobic search for meaning and desire to confess. Time expands and contracts; it is unclear what is real, what is internalised: at the end of this brief novel there is the sensation of having witnessed the dark dream of a stranger - Ruth McKee, The Irish Times

‘[A] strangely mesmeric tale […] Eoghan Smith is a stylist, and the lyricism of this narrative lifts the general air of gloom. I loved it! - Books Ireland

‘The Failing Heart has 152 pages which makes this an achievable feat for those looking to tiptoe outside of the familiar. I was exhausted after each chapter, drained and spent but I devoured every single word of this truly exquisite debut.’ - Dymphna Nugent, Waterford News & Star

Published by Dedalus Books (2018)