Keith Donohue:
(born 1959).
American novelist. He is the author of six novels:
The Girl in the Bog (2024), The Motion of Puppets (2016), The Boy Who Drew Monsters (2014), Centuries of June (2011), Ang
els of Destruction (2009), and The Stolen Child (2006). His acclaimed 2006 novel The Stolen Child, about a changeling, was inspired by the Yeats poem of the same name.
October proved a riot, a riot to the senses and climaxed those giddy last weeks before Halloween.
The sentence describes October as an intense, exhilarating sensory experience:
– “a riot to the senses”:
means an abundant, almost overwhelming mixture of autumn colors, smells, sounds, tastes, and cool weather. Here, “riot” means a vivid or exuberant profusion
— not civil disorder.
– “climaxed those giddy last weeks before Halloween”:
means October brought the excitement and anticipation leading up to Halloween to its highest point.
– “giddy”:
suggests joyful, slightly dizzy excitement.
In simpler words:
> ‘October was a wonderfully vivid season, culminating in the thrilling weeks leading up to Halloween.’
✍️ Author and source:
The quotation is attributed to Keith Donohue and comes from his novel “The Stolen Child”, first published in 2006.
Some online versions vary slightly in punctuation, but the commonly quoted wording is:
> “October proved a riot, a riot to the senses and climaxed those giddy last weeks before Halloween.”
Page numbers differ by edition.
