Description

We Used to Dance Here is a portrait of both Dublin and Dubliners in flux, exploring life on the margins, toxic masculinity and frustrated ambitions. With dog tracks, late-night radio talk shows, pubs, messy break-ups, industrial accidents and the reality of housing precarity, these stories show a darker, edgier side to Dublin and they do so in brilliant, crackling prose.

Publisher Review

Sharp, funny and vivid, these stories are brilliantly attuned to the messiness of life. Dave Tynan’s writing is electric in its energy and verve — Wendy Erskine The stories in We Used To Dance Here are gritty and soulful, spiky and incisive. They are big hearted but take no prisoners. A memorable debut collection that will stay with you — Colin Barrett Dave Tynan moves persuasively between male and female viewpoints… Dublin is the downbeat setting, a zone of inertia whose inhabitants are forever trying and failing to make authentic connections… The general gloom is lifted by Tynan’s fine eye for the telling detail, his terse and exact dialogue and exquisite descriptions * Financial Times * Pints, pubs, dog tracks, break-ups, breakdowns and a city brimful of people trying to survive a Dublin of failed ambitions are the touchstones of this debut… Pounds with dark energy, the prose as hypnotic as the dance music that pulses from clubs * Daily Mail * Tynan brilliantly captures romantic longing, including in men – a rarity in contemporary fiction… The collection’s young working-class male characters recall the protagonist of Close to Home, by Michael Magee. Tynan’s stories effectively explore modern masculinity but also convincingly portray female characters… His societal observations are spot-on * Irish Times * These stories make explicit the wider social backdrop to the collection… The best stories eschew moralistic melodrama for humanist complexity… A sharp eye for character and a nose for linguistic mischief mark Dave Tynan’s prose out from the pack… Urban decadence and alienation may be familiar subjects, but the real pleasures of this collection are the author’s attention to the tiny twists that send our lives spinning, and his patient sympathy for a generation lost in an endless quarter-life crisis * Times Literary Supplement * We Used to Dance Here is a surprising, compassionate, funny and musical collection of stories * RTE * A memorable debut. These stories are bleak but big-hearted; raw but genuine * Irish Examiner * We Used to Dance Here is full of Dublin-based characters seething with anger. Poverty stalks them. Humdrum jobs inhibit them. They’re wondering if this is all there is… A book to linger over, particularly if you know the city * Irish Times * This short story collection fizzes with friction, flair, and fury * Irish Examiner *