It’s been a great time for Irish short story collections. Last year brought fantastic releases from Lucy Caldwell (Intimacies), Louise Kennedy (The End of the World is a Cul-de-Sac) and Roddy Doyle (Life Without Children). This year has already seen fantastic books by Wendy Erskine (Dance Move), Sheila Armstrong (How to Gut A Fish) and…
Read more Forthcoming Irish Short Story Collections for 2022!
Keith Ridgway’s most recent novel, Hawthorn & Child had a fragmented, unnerving quality which made it feel as much like a collection of linked short stories as a novel. It was, the Guardian review noted, ‘a story about stories in a novel that isn’t a novel’. You can see the hints of this same atmosphere…
Read more No 427 Standard Time by Keith Ridgway #readingirelandmonth21
In ‘Cellists’, the final, and the best story in Nocturnes, an American woman pretends to be a world-famous cellist and tutors a talented young Hungarian in her hotel room in an unnamed Italian city. Under her tutelage, his playing soars – both technically and emotionally – but he soon realises that she cannot play the…
Read more No 476 Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music & Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro Book 12 of #20booksofsummer20