Description

Mary Lavin is the great unsung voice of Irish fiction. Here are her very best, most electric stories: illuminating, moving, arrows in flight.

‘This is a wonderful collection, and a reminder that Mary Lavin was – is – one of Ireland’s greatest writers’ Roddy Doyle

Mary Lavin’s stories feature ordinary people in the tight confines of ordinary life. From rural Ireland and the streets of Dublin they charm, irritate and intrigue in complicated brilliance, appearing to us with unique freshness. Good friendships, bad deeds, frustrations, missteps, hope and laughter are all found in captivating stories where real and astonishing things happen.

Few women were so consistently published in the New Yorker and yet today Lavin’s work is largely unpublished and overlooked. This collection re-establishes her as one of the most genius, irresistible and memorable voices of the last century.

SELECTED AND INTRODUCED BY COLM TOIBIN

‘She is, to come right out with it, magnificent’ New York Times

‘A feast of quiet humour and heartbreak’ Emma Donoghue

‘Mary Lavin’s stories conjure sadness, profundity, hilarity and wildness out of thin air. They are simply masterful’ Colin Barrett

‘Mary Lavin’s stories are a delight. They are delicate, but not too delicate to carry tragedy on one shoulder and comedy on the other’ Sunday Times

Publisher Review

Mary Lavin’s stories are patient, knowing, richly discriminating and wonderfully memorable. They’re important work — Richard Ford She is, to come right out with it, magnificent * New York Times * She reminds us…what literature is about — Anthony Burgess Mary Lavin’s stories are a delight. They are delicate, but not too delicate to carry tragedy on one shoulder and comedy on the other * Sunday Times * She fascinates me more than any other of the Irish writers of my generation — Frank O’Connor Mary Lavin is keeping the stronghold of the Irish story in first-rate repair * Spectator * Mary Lavin’s prose has the simplicity and glow of time-polished wood * Sunday Times * Caustic and also lyrical, she sees Ireland, even in its most obscure aspects, with a visionary penetration — Seamus Deane [Lavin] writes like a dream * New York Times Book Review * These sombre and skilfully written stories describe the tragic dilemmas with which character and nature confront humans everywhere * Washington Post *