Nicky was going with Doll by then and got to experience the house first-hand. The atmosphere was that of a continuous, continuously improvised party that periodically doldrums and never ended, contending playlists emanating from different rooms, a standing bank of smoke shimmering in seeming permanence in the sitting room, pin-eyed young ones rattling on the […]

”There’s one question I want to ask you”, he began.She looked up.”Just one?””If the phone rang in your garage on Long Island one morning, or one day, and it was me and I was in New York, or was even closer, and I had come to see you, what would you do?” Eilis appeared puzzled, […]

The next morning Cordelia lay in bed while drowsy bluebottles struggled against the windowpanes. She watched the sudden, fast shadows of swallows who flew past her window in fleeting pairs subtracting light from her room and marvelled how living things could suspend themselves in midair. She imagined the last of the over-ripe fruit, the latecomers, […]

Before he became a father, he imagined the relationship as being like an intensive version of owning a pet. The child, he thought, was essentially a passive, a vessel into which you poured your love. On TV that’s how it looked. Children were silent, dormant; you went into their bedrooms, gazed down at them fondly, […]

Enough time goes by and it is as if old things never happened. Things once fresh, immediate, terrible, receding away into old God’s time, like the walkers walking so far along Killiney Strand that, as you watch them, there is a moment when they are only a black speck, and then they’re gone. Maybe old […]

”Have I insulted you? Have I really got through? Well, listen to me, then. Listen while you’re conscious.” Hostility dawned at last. ”Don’t speak to me like that,” she blazed, and added ”please” with a trembling underlip. Her anger was not womanly, it was like a hurt little boy and its quality was as dangerously […]

Maurice Hearn sits alone in the café bar at the ferry terminal. He turns the remains of a third brandy in its glass. You keep going any way you can. The motions of the alcohol are familiar: the easy warming, the calm sustain, and now the slow grading into remorse. A melancholy hour falleth. As […]

It went around the village quickly. No one really knew what to do or say. Still, Kit and Paddy were kept busy with the visitors those first few days. People climbed the lane up from the main road in twos and threes and walked the fields down from Jamestown and Bunnacree to sympathize and speculate […]

An obsession, a mania, Lib supposed it could be called. A sickness of the mind. Hysteria, as that awful doctor had named it? Anna reminded Lib of a princess under a spell in a fairy tale. What could restore the girl to ordinary life? Not a prince. A magical herb from the world’s end? Some […]

No one needs a relationship. What you need is the basic cop-on to figure that out, in the face of all the media bullshit screaming that you’re nothing on your own and you’re a dangerous freak if you disagree. The truth is, if you don’t exist without someone else, you don’t exist at all. And […]

How light and tall he almost felt walking along with this girl at his side and some fresh, new, unrecognisable joy in his heart. Was it possible that the best bit of him was shining forth, and surfacing? Some part of him, whatever it could be called – was there any name for it? – […]

self-portrait: at sea I’d like you to sing, he said.  We don’t sing, Mr Lloyd.  But I need something to focus on. Counting or singing.  Not in this boat.  I read in a book that you people always sing while rowing.  Not a very good book then, is it, Mr Lloyd?  I came here because […]

The smell of the sea swept over the wall and in through the empty window-hole, wide and wild with a million intoxicating secrets. I don’t trust that smell. It hooks us somewhere deeper than reason or civilization, in the fragments of our cells that rocked in oceans before we had minds, and it pulls till […]

The summer stretch had come into the evenings: it was gone seven, but the sky was a soft clear blue and the light flooding through the open windows was pale gold. All around us the Place was humming like a beehive, shimmering with a hundred different stories unfurling. Next door Mad Johnny Malone was singing […]

”Look, Cathleen, will you give up the nonsense? We’re eighteen and we’re bored to death.” She lit a cigarette and puffed vigorously. She went on: ”We want to live. Drink gin. Squeeze into the front of big cars and drive up outside big hotels. We want to go places. Not to sit in this damp […]

Out of absolutely nowhere I felt a sudden, sweet shot of joy, piercing and distilled as the jolt I imagine heroin users get when the fix hits the vein. It was my partner bracing herself on her hands as she slid fluidly off the desk, it was the neat practiced movement of flipping my notebook […]

This is a female text, composed by folding someone else’s clothes. My mind holds it close, and it grows, tender and slow, while my hands perform innumerable chores. This is a female text, born of guilt and desire, stitched to a soundtrack of nursery rhymes. Doireann Ní Ghríofa: A Ghost in the Throat Äänikirjapalvelun algoritmit […]

Dark had so gained the trees that Lois, turning back from the window, was surprised at how light the room was. Day still coming in from the fields by the south windows was stored in the mirrors, in the sheen of the wallpaper, so that the room still shone. Mr. Montmorency had come in and […]

No one understood. How could they? Even Ellen struggled with it. She knew that this drama wasn’t about her and yet she could feel her life slipping away, all her assumptions about who she was and what people thought of her upended through no fault of her own. She accepted she had no right to […]

Doctor Lynn peered into the abdominal cavity, which was pulpy with dark juice. She dictated: Liver swollen, signs of internal bleeding. Kidney inflamed and oozing. Colon ulcerated.  I followed her scalpel with my own, taking samples.  She murmured, We could always blame the stars. I beg your pardon, Doctor? That’s what influenza means: influenza delle stelle–the influence of […]

Isä on jotenkin niin kuin Pyhä kolminaisuus, koska hänessäkin on kolme erilaista ihmistä. On lehteä lukeva aamuihminen, on iltaihminen satuineen ja rukouksineen, ja on se joka joutuu huonoille teille ja tulee kotiin viskiltä lemuten ja vaatii meitä kuolemaan Irlannin puolesta. Se huonoille teille joutuminen surettaa, mutta en minä isää voi hyljätäkään, koska se aamuihminen on […]

I am trying. And I am afraid. I am afraid to write about side-stepping and feelings and overwork and depression and breakdown because I am still convinced that admitting vulnerability makes me weak, not strong. I am afraid of confirming that I am young and cute and powerless. I am afraid of admitting to all […]

It was a difficult time to be Irish, a difficult time to be twenty-one years of age and a difficult time to be a man who was attracted to other men. To be all three simultaneously required a level of subterfuge and guile that felt contrary to my nature. I had never considered myself to […]

Grettalle talo on täynnä aaveita. Hän on varma, että jos hän katsoo nopeasti puutarhaan, hän näkee vanhan puisen kiipeilytelineen luurangon, josta Michael Francis putosi ja mursi etuhampaansa. Hän voisi mennä nyt alakertaan ja eteisen naulakko olisi täynnä koululaukkuja, jumppapusseja, Michael Francisin rugbyvarusteita. Hän voisi kääntyä kulman taakse ja nähdä poikansa makaamassa vatsallaan porrastasanteella lukien sarjakuvaa, […]

They were night people, one step away from ghosts, and strangers to each other. Some had husbands, as she guessed by their wedding rings, and many had children, who, contrary to the rules, telephoned in the night to report some crisis. The mothers, knowing that phone calls were forbidden, lurked in corners, to listen. Many […]