The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan

The recession has just hit a small community in Ireland, one of the countries who has struggled most in the Euro zone since the world wide financial collapse started a domino effect of misery.  Ryan's book is a series of linked stories with 21 voices that puts a face on that problem.

The book pieces together a fractured portrait of a community in shock. The local building firm that was the motor of its former roaring prosperity has collapsed, and crooked boss Pokey Burke has fled the country, leaving his employees betrayed as well as broke: here, the global crisis wears the face of your neighbor. His foreman Bobby, once the village's golden boy, is now the visible face of that abandonment.

We hear from builders and their wives, anxious mothers and fathers, young people looking for a better life elsewhere, a prostitute who has seen the class of her clients take a nosedive, a child who reflects the world of the parent in a heartbreaking way.  In fact, the whole book is heartbreaking with a remarkably light touch (and it weighs in a well under 200 pages, so an afternoon read).  The tone is conversational and people are for the most part trying to tell their stories.  Coping exceeds whining, but the long range outlook remains bleak.