"Being various" by Lucy Caldwell (ed) (Faber, 2019)

300+ pages of new Irish short stories - 24 of them. Late pregnancies. The Internet. Older men with younger women. I'll add "Yes" or "No" to the story descriptions if I feel a piece succeeds or fails.

• "How I fell in love with the well-documented life of Alexander Whelan (Yan Ge) - The 27 y.o. narrator (born in China, living in Dublin) meets Alex, Friends him, then he kills himself. She excavates his extensive internet past, learns more about him as we learn more about her. Her mother tells her she's not pretty and is at risk of being left on the shelf. Yes.
• "The Swimmers" (Paul McVeigh). No.
• "A Partial List of the Saved" (Danielle McLaughlin) - A couple, Conor and Reese, living in San Francisco, about to divorce because the wife was unfaithful, fly to Ireland together to see the husband's dying 80 y.o. father. He's become friendly with an old neighbour, Agnes. His daughter thinks Agnes is only after the house and wants Conor to sort it out. The 4 of them go to the Titanic exhibition. Matters are resolved. Yes.
• "Legends" (Louise O'Neill) - an anorexic (back in her village after her 1st univ term away - straight As in exams) wakes up beside a boy in his room. Oh no - it's Dylan, who shares a house with Aidan, her ex, who she's been trying to get back with. Doesn't do much for me.
• "Mikey Mulholland" (Wendy Erskine) - an active gay visits an old relative to help him choose music for a radio program he's been invited on. Sex-related memories punctuate the narrative. Doesn't do enough.
• "Stretch Marks" (Elske Rahill) - a woman struggling through her 5th pregnancy remembers the undignified death of her grandma. She tell her old neighbour about an abortion she went abroad to have. At the end of the story she may have had a still birth.
• "Transactions" (Sheila Purdy) - A woman's called into A&E because her 60 y.o. twin brother has a heart problem. She leaves him and gets caught shop-lifting, using her brother's card (not for the first time). She realises that her brother hinted that he knew about it and forgave her.
• "BrownLady12345" (Melatu Uche Okorie). No.
• "Pillars" (Jan Carson) - a standard enough story about a wife depressed following separation, except for the pillars, which make enough of a difference.
• "Echo" (Stuart Neville) - a 12 year old boy's imaginary friend is his older sister who died in an accident as a toddler. His mother's a bit mad and his father, an ex-author, is inadequate. A high-risk piece which just about works.
• "May the Best Man Win" (Kit de Waal) - It's 1981. Birmingham, UK. "The King" comes into a run-down pub with 3 mates (all white), carrying a TV. They watch an Ali boxing match while having a few drinks, then go. He treats the barmaid (20, with a 6 y.o. child), and the few (mostly black) drinkers with generous respect, offering the barmaid an escape from her life. Yes.
• "The Eclipse" (Darran Anderson) - An Irish nurse, recovering from a sort of breakdown moves to her great-aunt's house in London because she's having brain problems and is moving back to Ireland after 50 years. He (the nurse) is losing touch with reality. Too much mood.
• "Privacy" (Belinda McKeon) - A mother in NY has her garden dig up. She's flirty with the workers, then swears at then when she thinks they're desecrated her cat's grave, etc. Not really.
• "The Adminicle Exists" (Eimear McBride). No.
• "Wings" (David Hayden) - Starts ok, turns melodramatic then at the end strange.
• "Lambeth" (Jill Crawford) - a woman observes misbehaviour, starts to do something about it. A quirky voice. Perhaps the main character's unsettled. A longer piece might help reveal more.
• "Jack's Return Home" (Adrian McKinty) - A gay daughter with Islamic girlfriend is talked into killed her father's murderer, a Belfast boss. She does, after a passage where she wakes up and it was a dream. No (in this company anyway).
• "Feather" (Nicole Flattery) - on their release, convicts are offered a pet as therapy. The female narrator has a chicken, treating it like a boyfriend. It just about works.
• "Colour and Light" (Sally Rooney) - Rooney's good at quickly setting the scene of 3-way relationships. I don't feel cheated by the withholding of information - PoV and personality justify it. Here two brothers and an apparently successful woman try to work out what to do. The male narrator has strong morals. Yes.
• "The Lexicon of Babies" (Sinead Gleeson) - Baby began to be born as letters - "Fonts instead of fontanelles". Who will become the master race - vowels or consonants? Yes.
• "Alienation" (Arja Kajermo) The mother-of-two Mittel-Europa narrator (the kids are mentioned once) is an immigrant to Ireland, and understands the pecking order. Her Irish husband's abandoned her, which complicates her status. She starts earning money by writing. The story doesn't go anywhere. No.
• "Who's-Dead McCarthy" (Kevin Barry) - a (fictional?) character study with essay-like features. Yes.
• "The Downtown Queen" (Peter Murphy) - Music club life '73-'79 in New York. Nico, Television, Blondie, Patti Smith.
• "Gérard" (Lisa McInerney) - Dublin friends of a girl who left for Paris without knowing French think of ways to convince her that she's not going out with THE Gérard Depardieu. They research about him then go over together.

Other reviews

• Jackie Law (There are tales within this anthology that particularly resonated and others enjoyed but with less impact. Only one struck me off key – ‘The Downtown Queen’ by Peter Murphy.)
• Laura Marriott
• Niamh Donnelly (We get everything from crime fiction, to young adult, to magical realism, to new modernism. Many of the most realist stories ... are also the most impressive for their mastery of craft and ability to refashion the world into an interesting narrative. ... The anthology ends up being two-thirds female, one-third Northern, two-thirds born in Ireland, two-thirds currently resident – a mix that’s never going to be all-encompassing but still feels representative of the Ireland of today.)
• Luke Warde (these stories portray a society in flux, unsure of itself, and far from immune to the fissures tearing our neighbours apart. ... bodily autonomy is a feature of a number of stories ... Nicole Flattery’s relentlessly strange ‘Feather’ is the highlight to be savoured. )