Originally published by Killick Press in 2004; reprinted by HarperCollins 2005
Down to the Dirt is Joel Thomas Hynes' Percy Janes Award-winning first novel. Told in the voices of various characters and from first and third-person perspectives, Down to the Dirt follows the hard-drinking, hard-living Keith Kavanagh from his sexual initiation with an older woman in the small community of his childhood to his Quixotic quest for meaning in the big city. Kavanagh is one of Canadian literature's most memorable and mesmerizing creations. He may appear hard as nails—a self-destructive hedonist, a dynamo of crackling energy and imminent violence—but at heart, he is (in the words of novelist Michael Crummey) “a troubled Holden Caulfield innocent" desperately searching for his place in a world that doesn't seem to want or need him. Hynes’ great achievement is in maintaining a convincing balance between tenderness and brutality as he guides the seemingly hopeless Kavanagh from one scene of comic chaos into another. Down to the Dirt is a lit fuse burning with anarchic energy. Down to the Dirt on Myspace.com Audio Book Reviews: From Audiofile Magazine "Picture a teenaged outcast in Newfoundland and his two closest friends—they all love to talk dirty, each with a somewhat skewed Irish accent. This is why the audio version of Hynes’s first novel (really linked stories) is more than welcome. Hynes, also an actor, narrates in protagonist Keith Kavanagh’s voice, joined by Sherry White and Johnny Harris. If anyone has ever wondered what’s going through the minds of those eternal bad boys and the girls they hook up with, this sensitive portrait is a good place to begin. Hynes’s clipped style, taking stories to a breaking point, then dropping them cold, before too much emotion sets in, works very well."
From the Ottawa Citizen In reading, whether with the eyes or the ears, serendipity is the discovery of a new writer -- that is, a writer previously unknown to the reader. For me, one such discovery was Joel Thomas Hynes (also called just Joel Hynes), rising young literary star from Newfoundland. His 2004 debut novel, Down to the Dirt, won awards and created real buzz, drawing enthusiastic praise from established writers like Michael Crummy and David Adams Richards. It is obvious why. The book, which reads like a collection of closely linked stories told from shifting points of view, is an explosive look at growing up in Newfoundland's "Irish Loop," along the southern coast of the Avalon Peninsula. By turns violent, frightening and funny, the book is also poignant, rollicking, raw and decidedly not for delicate sensibilities. It is a riveting read -- or listen, in its dynamic audiobook format. The unique spoken version captures every nuance of its in-yer-face poetry and inimitable vernacular. Read by Hynes himself, Sherry White and Jonny Harris -- all three of whom appeared with Mary Walsh in CBC's blackly comic Hatching, Matching and Dispatching -- the audio version of Down to the Dirt is the work of Newfoundland's upstart audiobook publisher, Rattling Books. It's a heck of a trip.
Book Reviews: "Hynes captures [dialogue] masterfully...Raunchy, humorous and energetic...A gritty, moving portrait of growing up - or trying to, anyway."
Publisher's Weekly
"Joel Hynes is the best young voice in years"
David Adams Richards
"...scary, sexy, and funny, sometimes all three at once. It's a hell of a ride."
Michael Crummey, author of River Thieves