Category: reading

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My review of “Mother America” on the Dublin Book Festival website

Here’s my review of Nuala Ni Chonchuir’s latest short story collection. Nuala is reading at the Dublin Book Festival this year and her book is rather good!

This was my first book from Nuala that I had read. I have came across Nuala through her blog and at various literary readings in the last while. She is incredibly generous with her time and comments on readers’ blogs. Now, it’s my turn to be generous with my comments and time.

Mother America is quite a female book. We can see that from the title and most of the stories focus in on women, mothers, sisters and wives. Having said that, it doesn’t prevent Nuala from writing brilliant narratives from a male perspective either. The short story collection opens with Peach  which is written from a male perspective. Its opening line demands your attention
There was a pregnant woman getting drunk in the back lounger.
Dearie me. I was ready immediately with my judgements on this woman who turns out to be quite a tragic lady in the end. This story will hit you with the rawness of feeling and pity you feel for the two main protagonists.
Nuala’s stories range from the really short type like The Egg Pyramid;a story that uses the story of the Mexican painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. It focusses on Diego’s and his infidelity with Frida’s sister Cristina. It uses this as a comparison with the woman in the story and her sister. Crushing stuff in very few words.
Letters is one of those really good short stories where you have so many questions to ask about the characters within it. The story opens with a mother opening her son’s letter. We find out this woman relocated to America for her son but has been effectively dumped and left there to do battle with a country she feels like an alien in. Nuala creates a believable character and made me feel rather angry at her son!
Nuala is also brilliant at creating stories from the past. Triangle boy, Moongaxer, Scullion and My name is William Clongallen all speak of women from the past but they all tell of themes of infidelity, love  identity and women’s struggles. Universal themes that can be found throughout all of her stories.
The great thing about this book is that you can pick it up, read one story and think about it for a few days before you delve into another. Or you can read it all in one go!
All of the stories are delightful and capture that important moment of life that a good short story should and then rising to a satisfying conclusion. The stories never get too long or tedious. some are only of a few pages, which is great to see flash fiction taking its rightful place in the short story collection.

You can catch Nuala in the Dublin Book Festival “Inspiring Short Stories” event on Sunday, 18 November. For more details, visit their programme pagehttp://www.dublinbookfestival.com/category/programme/prog-by-day/sunday-18th/
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Irish Book Awards 2012

The awards will be rather posh!

The Irish Book Awards are being hosted this year in the R.D.S with a Gala Dinner award ceremony on 22nd November. They will also be screened on RTE.

The most exciting thing about this is that there are many excellent short story anthologies nominated to win this year. The Eason novel of the year contains 3 out of 6 short story collections. One of them is Kevin Barry! Can he possibly win an more awards? Oh, I think so.

Vote, Kevin! I’d also like to force/encourage you to vote for Mary Costello “The China Factory” for best newcomer and Tana French in two other categories. But,  whether you vote or not, you really have to read some of the books on these lists.

The Irish just know how to write!

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Review:Cheating at Canasta by William Trevor

William Trevor does not mess about.

I just finished his short story collection Cheating at Canasta. I found this in the bargain bin in Eason’s for €3! A shame, really when we see other forms of “Writing” getting the top three positions in the reader’s list.

But, it was great for me as this was the first time I had the chance to properly read Trevor’s writing since my U.C.D Arts days. It also was a welcome piece of calmness after Nathan Englander’s What we talk about when we talk about Anne Frank. Trevor simply writes exquisite pieces of life.

The collection opens with The Dressmaker’s child, which was featured in the Granta Book of Irish Short Stories. The Dressmaker’s child is a wonderfully horrific story of death and moving statues of Holy Mary. It take on a supernatural feel and ends in the way a short story should, in complete wonder. Unfortunately, Men of Ireland is a story that we are only all too familiar with, the story of clerical child abuse. Trevor plays with the reader right until the end and made me feel a bit guilty for disbelieving a homeless man and the story that had stuck with him all of his life. Bravado is a violent and bloodthirsty story and leaves an imprint on the characters and the readers. At Olivehill shows how time and history is irrelevant to some. A mother is left defending her heritage while her sons push modern life onto her home. The children is a story about a grieving father and his daughter and how she copes when her father begins to see another woman and bring her and her children into their house. The grieving daughter shows her anger by reading her deceased mother’s books, a form of rebellion and defiance to what she see her father doing.

The last story was quite blissful in a sick, demented way. Folie a deux is about a man who starts to see someone from the past in his everyday life. This man he sees is not real but the memories of what happened are. We are led skillfully back into the man character’s childhood and into a horrid story of how an innocent game went wrong. This never leaves the narrator’s thoughts and it wouldn’t leave mine, to be honest either!

The collection is a sad and melancholic one. Trevor is not the judge of moralistic lives. Many crimes happen in these stories yet I didn’t feel worn down or depressed by their darkness. Secrets are never left that way and each of the character’s secrets are revealed by the end of the story. They will sit with you.

I just love the way Trevor tells a seemingly simple narrative about simple characters that we can bond with and feel for immediately. There is no need for artistic or literary references here. He does not need to be clever. Instead, he observes life and people and transforms one particular movement in a character’s life, capturing it at the right moment of catharsis.

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Under Thirty writing project to be launched

Under Thirty Writing project

Stephen Doherty had an idea. He contacted me a while back to tell me about this idea. As you know, I am part of the Carlow Co-operative Writers’ Group and we love writing, reading and giving feedback. Stephen was looking for reviewers to help aspiring writers under 30. I was very excited and honoured to be asked so we started a conversation up!

In my first guest blog, he answers some questions about his new project

What is the project about?

Under Thirty is a new and unique non-profit project that nurtures and showcases young Irish fiction at home and aboard. It provides writers with access to a panel of experienced writers, literary scholars, editors and publishers who work entirely voluntarily to review submissions and provide feedback and encouragement to the country’s aspiring writers.

Where did the idea for the project originate?

The idea originally came from my experience working with young people over recent years. Although coming from very different backgrounds, a commonality was that many of them used creative writing as a means of communicating their own internal worldview to the outside world – be it to a psychologist, a friend, a parent, or even to a stranger. Expressive writing can have a powerful cathartic effect for a writer, especially in a therapeutic setting. Coupled with the added dimension of fiction, such a process allows a writer the freedom to take a step back from the situation, and to share it with others without feeling embarrassed or exposed – a form of: “my friend has a problem”. Others would also use examples from their favourite stories to relate their problems to what the characters in the stories are going through, and to express their emotions through a third party.

This concept of book therapy, or bibliotherapy, is employed as a psychological method and has a range of uses, and an important factor of its success is the perception of the writer of the attentiveness of the person they are sharing their story with. In a time where we have been encouraged to listen to the younger generation, to our children, it seems that many of them, at least in my experience, feel listened to but not truly heard.

In retrospect, this was the planting of the seed for the Under Thirty project. I wanted to find a way that these people could express themselves to the world and feel that they were really being listened to. By having established writers and scholars reading their stories, this adds a strong element of support, mentorship, and community to budding writers all over the country and abroad.

What do the panel do?

The panel consists of over fifty volunteers who offer their time and expertise to the project and its writers. After a blind preview process, all entrants are given back their manuscripts with suggestions and advice from the panel. The most promising submissions are selected for publication in a bi-annual journal, the first of which will be published in December. In this way, writers can be assured that their work speaks for itself, and the panel of reviewers have the freedom to truly feed back into the development of new writers, and provide them with the constructive criticism and motivation to go even further with their work.

The panel have been very supportive and helped the project reach out into many networks around the country and abroad. We have heard from schools, universities, writing groups, libraries, broadcasters and politicians, who are keen to be involved, and in this way it has grown from strength to strength.

How can submissions be made?

The project homepage www.under-30.org is the base for the project. Writers can make submissions via the website, and we also use it and social media channels to provide information about funding opportunities in the arts, connect writers of all experiences with one another through events and online fora, and to add to our growing pool of freely available resources for new writers. The deadline for the first issue is midnight on November 7th, 2012, but the bi-annual nature of the project means that the next deadline is never too far away and we can provide a very reasonable turn around to the entrants. The inaugural issue will be published in December as a soft-bound book and also as an e-book at a special event at Dublin City University.

Biography

Stephen Doherty is a post-doctoral research fellow in Dublin City University, where he researches and lectures in areas of psychology, cognition, and language. He has several years of experience as an editor, writer, and translator, and smattering of publications.

Website: www.under-30.org

Facebook: www.facebook.com/underthirty

Twitter: @underthirty

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Great interview with Kevin Barry in New Yorker Magazine

Kevin Barry seems to be everywhere again, all of a sudden. A nice teacher lady on twitter sent me a poster, telling me that Mr. Barry was reading at the Westport Literary Festival. Unfortunately, I won’t be there, I can’t be everywhere!
Then, I ordered a copy of The Moth Magazine and it contained a really detailed interview with Kevin. It was the first time I read much about his personal life and past career so I loved it!
Then, the New Yorker magazine online handed me another free gift of Kevin Barry! Kevin speaks about how landscape and places leave a remnant of mood on him, this then influences him to write a story. Brilliant and this will make sense when you read his stories.
Check the link out here http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/10/this-week-in-fiction-kevin-barry.html?mobify=0

I’ll be reviewing the Moth Magazine in my next post. Life is good. Anyone got any Kevin Barry interviews or any form of literary, reading or writing links, send them onto me, please! You can follow me on twitter @rozzlewis

 

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Joseph O’ Connor on Morning AM talking about short stories


My friend told me that Joseph O’ Connor, author of new short story collection, Where have you been?, was on the Late Late looking slightly older or greyer than he should be!

I had a read a very good review of his new short story collection so I thought I would check out this interview. I am not overly keen on Ryan Tubridy so I watched Morning AM on TV3. In this video clip, Joseph talks about his love for short stories, music and life. He tells us about his new short stories and how they reflect a modern Ireland. Some of the stories are set in Celtic Tiger times and some in the recession. I am dying to read it more than ever now!

Where have you been has been added to my ever expanding reading list, which I will get to. I am nearly finished William Trevor’s Cheating at Canasta but then onto 3 other new collections! Joseph makes some interesting observations about why the Irish are just amazing story-tellers. He puts it own to the Irish and their love of the gossip/story in the pub or coffee shop. I think he is right.

I also disagree with my friend critique of him, Joseph looks really well and pretty funky! He doesn’t looked wrecked or old? Or maybe, I see things through a short story lens!

http://www.tv3.ie/3player/show/184/54238/1/Ireland-AM

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Cork International Short Story Festival 2012:Review Part 1

Back in 2000, someone in the Munster Literature Centre had an idea.

They wanted to organise an event to worship at the altar of the short story form. They dubbed it the “Frank O’Connor International Short Story Festival” It was a great success but that was not good enough, no, it wasn’t. In 2002, the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize was introduced. To top things off, in 2005 the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award was added to the festival’s greatness.

2012 was to be my first visit to this festival and I didn’t need an excuse to return to Cork City! I booked in for all the events on Saturday apart from John Banville. If you have read my post on writing.ie here on John Banville’s reading at Huntington Castle, you might see why I declined to attend. Next time, John, maybe.

My Mother she killed me, my father he ate me:Readings  and discussion from Kate Bernheimer’s new book of the same title.

All the events I attended were held in the stunning building of Triskel Christ Church.

The first reading I attended was My Mother she killed me, my father he ate me, a reading on the place of fairytales in adult reading, which was being chaired by Gearóid Ó Crualaoich, former Head of Folklore and Ethnology at UCC( amongst many other things!)

We were treated to a brilliant reading of a re-imagining of the Russian fairytale of Baba Yaga. See description here. The lady who read, whose name I did not get, was hilarious. She used a range of child-like voice, Cork and Kerry slurs with an occasional posh gentleman for the villain. A great start.

Next up was Kate herself who spoke about her constant love and commitment to the fairytale. I wanted to ask her what her favourite fairy-tale was but I guess she gets asked that a lot. She must have pre-empted this question as she told us that she has n favourite, she loves them all. Aw.

Kate Bernheimer-she likes her fairytales
Discussion on the fairytale

After Kate, came Ilya Kaminsky. He has published many poetry collections, the most well-known being Dancing in Odessa. He reads in a distinctively mesmerising style, full of emotion and in a “Eastern European Shamansitic” way. He had his story projected behind him which was very helpful to the visual learners. It can be hard to simply listen! Teachers, take note! Ilya is a unique reader, people say it’s because English is not his first language or because he is deaf but I think it’s because he is simply Ilya and he will always read this way, with passion and drama, the way good writing deserves. It’s courageous as there are quite set reading styles out there.

Ilya Kaminsky-original wordsmith

Then Gearóid panelled a question and answer discussion type affair. To be honest, I could have listened to this man all day. His life time research project has been in the area of the traditional narrative. More, more!

I treated myself to a copy of Kate’s book afterwards. It contains 40(41, Kate tells us!) re-imagined stories inspired loosely and non-loosely by a fairy-tale that Kate had given to the author. There’s a couple of Irish fairy-tales and all the old favourites of Rumplestiskin, Snow White, Blue Beard. The author include Neil Gaiman, Michael Cunningham, Aimee Bender, Kelly Link, Lydia Millet and many more. When I finish, I will do a review on it!

Kate was at the festival giving a workshop on the fairy-tale, I would have loved to have taken part but they were held during the week. I really enjoyed this reading and was also looking forward to my personal highlight: Kevin Barry. My review on his reading is coming up next in Part 2. Hope you can wait!

 Kate’s website can be found here at www.katebernheimer.com or follow her on twitter @fairytalereview and Ilya’s website can be found here at www.ilyakaminsky.com

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Five Dials:free mag-stories from Kevin Barry, Nuala Ni Chonchuir and Lydia Davis et more!

Twitter is great for following new literary talent and any sort of bookish and writing news. I follow the brilliant Nuala Ni Chonchur, who not only writes and writes novels, poetry and short stories, teaches classes but she also runs a pretty cool blog. It is called http://womenrulewriter.blogspot.ie/. I think she writes 3 other blogs too but let’s just focus on this one. Easy now!

Nuala’s twitter handle is @NualaNiC and she is a brilliant social conversationalist. She tweets you right back and if you make a comment on her blog, she replies! That’s manners for you!

Seriously, though her blog and tweet alerted me to the Five Dials magazine. I have heard of it before but didn’t quite realise how good it was. I must admit I only really went to delve into it properly when I saw these 4 words-Kevin.Barry.new.writing.

But, this issue not only has writing from himself, it has short stories, fiction, poetry and strange images from Nuala Ni Chonchuir, Lydia David, Mike McCormack and D.W Wilson. Kevin’s story is well, very Kevin. A story called “The lovely Miss-what’s her face” is about a frustrated young man with psoriasis who likes to cook spaghetti bolgonese. Little does he know is that a man will never find a nice, young girl if he is going ot present her with a made from scratch spag bol. This woman is not really after the spag bol.

Nuala’s story Room 313  is really, really nice and sad and tender and the ending just hits the right spot. It’s about a chambermaid and the things she sees, the work she does/doesn’t do and her favourite room, Room 313. The chambermaid kicks some bottom at the end.

So, you can see why I am so excited because not only does five dials have these amazing short story writers and other bits of fiction and poetry, it also puts out  a call to all.

Zsuzsi Gartner is another pretty cool short story writer(why so many?), she is looking for people to “adopt” her short stories. She gives eleven of her story starters and you have to write to her, the old fashioned way and ask for adoption rights. She will send you a cert and you must finish the story. Simple.

I wish. Your story may be published in a future issue of Five Dials. I am going to have a go so why not you?

The link to the Five dials Issue 25 can be found here. and Nuala’s blog at here.

I am so good to you, you know.

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The beautiful indifference by Sarah Hall

Sarah Hall is mostly known for her novels and The Beautiful Indifference is her first set of short stories.

I liked them mostly.

she opens the book with Butcher’s perfume, a story of a normal girl who gets wound up with a savage family. It is full of ancient superstition, horse whispering and general naughtiness. The family that the main character gets involved with are outwardly aggressive yet they show great moments of gentleness towards their family members and the main character when she eventually becomes aligned with their circle. They also loves animals, especially so that any human that hurts their animals pay for it. It is bound to end in violence and it does.

The next story Beautiful Indifference gives us a welcome break from the vile story before it. It is one of those stories that female authors often write about, a woman and their body, the feminine themes. An older lady with her younger, energetic lover. The theme of animals and beasts come through towards the end and the ending reminds me of a certain Irish writer, Kevin Barry. “The hills were around her. She took up her purse, opened the car door and stepped into them. It was like opening a book.” Hope I haven’t ruined it for you.

Bees, I didn’t like because it describes bees in far too much detail for me! The agency didn’t work for me either. I felt I had read this before or something.

She murdered mortal me is a perfect short story for me. It starts with a girlfriend having a big fight with her boyfriend while on holiday in South Africa and the landscape pulses alongside the telling of the girl;s story as she walks away through the jungle and its possible danger. An animal she meets on the way ties the ending in brilliantly and this is a story that you will have to go back and read again to make sure that is what the ending was about.

The Nightlong River is a beautifully told story, again capturing the landscape as the atmosphere to the sad characters within it. Vuotjarvi scared the hell of me, mostly because we never find out what happens really but it is the imaginary that scares most.

I really enjoyed these stories, all very much different characters and settings but with a full-on theme of landscape, animals and humans, we are left trying to breath for air.

Easy reading-4/5

Turnpageability-4/5

Should I get it? Yes!