From the bestselling author of "After Rain" cones a stunning collection of short stories that captures the nuances of rural and middle-class life in the Ireland that Trevor knows so well. Available for the first time in the United States.
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From the bestselling author of "After Rain" cones a stunning collection of short stories that captures the nuances of rural and middle-class life in the Ireland that Trevor knows so well. Available for the first time in the United States.
Read Less
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Fine. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 384 p. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
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Very good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
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Fair. Used book-May contain writing notes highlighting bends or folds. Text is readable book is clean and pages and cover mostly intact. May show normal wear and tear. Item may be missing CD. May include library marks. Fast Shipping.
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Seller's Description:
Very good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Very good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
There are few societies more suitable for the short story than the societies of rural Ireland with their intensely social, strongly religious people bound by ties of land and time. Every small Irish town has its priest, solicitor, local businessman and small farmer and each has his place and must stay in it or face the peeping windows and gossiping housewives of his community. Out of these societies come such masters of the form as Liam O'Flaherty, Frank O'Connor, and William Trevor. James Joyce and his Dubliners is of a different order being both a writer operating at another level, not only to these writers but to all his contemporaries and, indeed his successors, but also an Irish writer largely unconcerned with, indeed hostile to, rural Ireland, being a Dublin Jackeen through and through.
The stories in this selection cover a wide canvas. A number are engaging, fast paced stories like Two More Gallants and Events at Drimaghleen. While it's not true to say that such stories could have equally come from the pen of, say, Raymond Carver, with a change of people and place names, for they contain a germ of Irish society, it is true to say that with some revision their setting could be changed to Bournemouth or Poughkeepsie and not too much would be lost.
However, other stories, and, in some ways here is the heart of the selection, are so thoroughly drenched in Irish rural society that it is impossible to image them taking place anywhere else and any attempt to export them to foreign climes would fail or require so thorough a revision that they would be unrecognisable from the original. Of these The Ballroom of Romance is the most famous and, though overlong, likely to cause any reader who ever set foot in an Irish rural ballroom of a Saturday to recoil in horror. Teresa's Wedding is another, and better, example; Trevor hovers over the scene of the appalling, loveless wedding, the blustering priest, the bitching mothers and resigned fathers, the gombeen friends of the groom and the gossiping friends of the bride. Everyone pretending things aren't so, knowing they are, and knowing everyone else knows too. A conspiracy of conformity and a horror to observe through a writing style that makes you complicit in the unfolding misery.
A good read and recommended for anyone interested in Ireland and its people.
