"The end of the world is a cul de sac" by Louise Kennedy (Bloomsbury)

Stories from The Stinging Fly, The Lonely Crowd, etc.

• The end of the world is a cul de sac - Sarah finds a donkey wandering in the derelict show-home that's part of the derelict estate of 17 houses that she owns. Ryan, a grandson of someone she knows, helps her evict it.

  Did I scare you? he said to her hands. She looked at them. They were trembling.

  He gives her a lift home, 200m away, and asks her out. She's known as the "gangster's moll". Her husband has disappeared, leaving her penniless. Ryan is a drug-dealer, well off, owed money by the gangster? She sleeps with him. Her husband had sold a jerry-build estate house to her sister and her husband cheaply, hoping it would help sell the other houses. The sister's husband killed himself there.
• In silhouette - it's during The Troubles in Ireland. 2nd person singular except for the final section in the 1st person, 40 years after. A running theme of make-up, which works well. I think I've missed some of the plot - hints about time/place need awareness of history.
  You dress up to go to the Halfway Inn, leaving your mother (and kids?!) behind, get your brother Thady to buy you a drink and give you some coins for the juke-box. Ciaran/Winky is there. A stranger (first a silhouette) offers you a drink. Your brother tells you to go home.
  You work behind a cosmetics counter (UK? 1981?). Thady is nearly on hunger strike? A security guard, Sean, asks you for a drink after work. In the pub (opposite a tube station) you write "BOMB" in lipstick on your handbag and show it to the people on the next table.
  You're home before 10. Thady comes home late, bloodstained. You put his clothes in the washing machine, or burn them.
  Thady is lying in rest in the house, bullet-holed (breakout 10 years before?). Winky visits. After the funeral He drives you to the airport. Thady's funeral is featured in the paper.
  Police question her about the bar and leaving before 10. When you get home there's Thady.
  You wait outside Bromley South Station for Ciaran. Sean has left you a "mistress" house.
  Police are still questioning you. Thady and Winky are there. You think Winky's given the police a statement too.
  You empty the house. You're going back to Bromley. You walk where the Half Way inn used to be. You meet Ciaran as planned.
  "I" am at home waiting for my next cosmetics appointment to turn up. I watch a recording on TV about the event 40 years before and realise that Ciaran was one of 3 men who assaulted Thady? The customer arrives - "She tells me a secret. They always do."
• Hunter-gatherers - Siobhán is living with game-bird beater Sid, who wants to be self-sufficient, living off local produce. She not keen on the idea. From the house (a gate lodge) she sees a hare only feet away. It's the last day of the shooting season. Paedar (gamekeeper and Sid's friend) arrives with Rachael - "the girlfriend's daughter". Sid, Paedar and Rachael go out. She reads about hares - they box when the female doesn't want the male. When the 3 return, Sid's drunk. Siobhán's sober and angry. Maybe Sid forces Rachael to shoot and kill the hare, which has returned again, thinking the place safe. Siobhán reads a Yeats story "about a man who is led astray by a mysterious hare". There are hints that she and Sid will s. plit, and several hints of males exploiting females.
• Wolf point - Peter, a forester, returns home to find his little daughter Clary in pyjamas sitting on their gatepost. Emma is still in bed. Peter tries to sort her out then goes to the forest with Clary. He recalls meeting Emma - she was 22, he 43 - a confirmed bachelor. He recalls when her depression began. He remembers watching a helicopter approach the lake. It had been rescuing Emma. "When she came round and she realised she had been rescued she had to be sedated again." He and Clary play in a clearing, using tree-stumps as thrones.
  I think the story ends too soon.
• Belladonna - Róisín is a schoolgirl from Belfast living in Eire with her mother who works in a hospice. Her father has left. She gets teased at school. She watches a couple move in opposite. The man's a herbalist working from home. Róisín cleans for them and becomes friendly with the woman, Anna. Róisín's school behaviour improves. She makes a friend, and in the herbalist's medical records finds info that can be used to silence one of her bullies. Anna becomes deranged, bruised, hospitalised. Domestic violence? Maybe, but Anna used to be a drug addict. Her husband saved her.
  No.
• Imbolc - Elaine and Liam are struggling on a remote sheep farm with a baby and another due. The story begins with Elaine focussing on the baby and watching Stacey, an 18 year-old agriculture student. The barn is a "grow house" but the lack of snow on the roof might be a give-away. There's a flashback to bailiffs coming, to Liam arranging something (the grow house presumably) with his main creditor, the brother of Stacey. Her father arrives. She sees

  a new scatch by the keyhole on the driver's door, deep this time. She could picture him outside the Mountain Inn in the dark, a lit Carroll's in the corner of his mouth, trying to find the lock

  She goes to Liam, gathers a new-born lamb that needs attention. She sees Liam having sex with Stacey while he looks at Elaine with hatred. Elaine returns to the house

  Her father was at the sink, holding Grace. He lifted the child's hand in a wave. Elaine raised hers in reply and trudged towards them, the lamb trembling in her arms

  This ending's tidily symbolic. Some of the story's details feel too convenient, too tidy.
• Beyond Carthage - It started raining as soon as Noreen and Therese landed in Tunisia. Noreen had wanted the Canary Islands, Therese something exotic. They've ended up in a concrete tourist resort. Therese has had breast cancer surgery and has since found her husband on dating sites (where he says he's interested in culture). She's on this holiday partly to annoy him. They see local boys try to pick up middle-aged women tourists. They go to Baths, hoping for an authentic experience then realising that it's another gigolo place. Next day Therese sets off early for Carthage, which is where the story ends.
• What the birds heard - After a break-up with Paul, Doireann has rented a sea-side cottage to do some painting. Tim, a 50 y.o. bachelor neighbour, befriends her. They sleep together. She gets pregnant - she'd tried vainly for a child with Paul. Tim isn't very considerate. She paints him out of a painting. She plans to leave without telling him of the pregnancy.
  No.
• Gibraltar - Section headings (sections are photos?) are years that skip back and forth - 1983: Audrey (partner Marty) is 7 months pregnant. She already has Rory. 1990: Shona's communion. 2001: Shona and Keith prior to their break-up. 2011: Shona marries Lorcan. Rory's living in New Zealand with a girlfriend. 1980: Audrey and Marty. 1983: Audrey gives birth, but is Marty the father? She wants to call Matt. 1976: Audrey and Marty's wedding. He sees this photo 40 years later. 1986: Marty, Audrey and Matt are the only ones who know that Shona isn't Marty's child. 2016: Audrey, post-chemo (but it's terminal), with grandchild Amber Mae, 2. Shona is pregnant. Rory is a divorced father of a son. This is Shona's favourite photo. 1973: Audrey and Marty.
  No.
• Powder - Eithne is driving Sandy (Ethan's mother), who has arrived from Ohio. She has Ethan's ashes. They're touring Ireland. They are quite likable tourists, but they're awkward with each other, and try to get separate hotel rooms. At a hotel an american business man, married, buys Eithne a drink. She tells him she's a widow. Sandy thinks that Ethan (an american) and Eithne had been engaged but Ethan never got round to it. Actually they weren't getting on too well on the night he died of a heart attack. They scatter the ashes, though a lot of them have already been scattered elsewhere.
  No.
• Hands - Jason's a healer, says his mother. People pay him and he lays on hands. He visits the woman he's separated from. Sometimes he lets him stay the night. Their little son has something like cystic fibrosis. The mother is better than Jason at using her hands on their son.
  No
• Once upon a pair of wheels - Aidan, a landscaper and Niamh, a solicitor meet again - he's doing her garden. She has an 8 year old son. The boy he had knocked down and killed was 8. Mrs Ferguson is his landlady. Sometimes they share a smoke . Actually he's been stalking Niamh a bit. She ditched him after the guilty verdict - she'd been in the car. He wanders through her house, keeps the key. He has an eager girlfriend who he doesn't care much about. And the end the old (on chemo?) landlady asks to come over later for a chat. He says "I'll be back by six. All on my lonesome".
• Brittle things - Ferdia is nearly 5. Maybe he's autistic. His mother Ciara and father Dan (a fisherman, rather in denial) look after him. They're both trying to made him say "Mum". They have a drink in a pub with a couple who don't know about Ferdia's problem. The locals do. When Ferdia makes strange noises and shows early signs of having a tantrum, the couple, plus Ciara and Dan are all embarrassed. Dan begins to accept that there's an issue. I like the pub conversation between the four of them.
• Sparing the heather - Hugh (gamekeeper, English) only eats meat he's killed himself. Mairead (married to Brendan) comes to collect the rent and have sex with Hugh. Neither is young. The Garda have been searching near Mairead's house for weeks. They all join a shoot. Hugh lights some gorse. After, there's a buffet at a hotel. Hugh isn't as careful to hide the relationship as Mairead is. There's a rumour that the missing body was "ground up in a meat processing plant". Mairead has drunk a bottle of wine - she's bored. She walks to her old house - Hugh's. She finds some photos - does Hugh have kids? She has 2, in Australia. She cdrinks more, falls asleep. Hugh returns, tells her to go. She returns to the hotel, drinks more. Brendan has told her years before that he buried the body. She has told the police the location!
• Garland Sunday - Orla, 49, has been picking bilberries. Jerry, her husband is at home, preparing his speech for the fair. Jerry's gone off Orla. The cleaner Kathy (38, a grandmother) is there too. The women make a cake. At the fair it's traditional for women to give a cake to the man she fancies. After Orla had twins (now away at a surfing camp) she was on anti-depressants for 14 years. 5 months ago she had an abortion, flying from Ireland to Manchester. She's reading a book about a women whose unhappy marriage affected her children. The cake's for the festival where Jerry has made Orla a judge for the Baby Competition. The cleaner's grand-daughter wins. Orla, as a peace offereing, gives Jerry the cake. Orla wonders who her husband told about the abortion - Michael, his father, but anyone else? Michael tells her how the Lavin girl had offered him a cake at the festival years ago. He'd refused, shaming her. She got drunk and was raped by Noel Scanlan who married her. After giving birth she wanted to leave her husband. Then she killed the child - not in the caves as local rumour claims, but by drowning in the bath. At the end, she goes to bed and continues reading her book. She joins her with slices of her cake. They begin to make up.
  I like the descriptions and details (the singer at the fair, etc), but the baby theme has external props which are big and clumsy without any internal subtlety.

A commonly used narrative device is to delay the imparting of information which is known to the characters (who's married to who, etc). And the stories pump up the emotions by including several childhood illnesses, early deaths, etc. I'm impressed by the dialogue.

Other reviews

• Jude Cook (In many stories the natural world, with its animal appetites and feral, sexual energy, impinges on the urban ... “Brittle Things” [is] an intensely moving story, simultaneously poignant and defiant; a diamond amid the collection’s many jewels.)
• Jane Downs
• Joanne Hayden (Kennedy’s stories unpick different forms of betrayal, exploring toxic marriages, quiet suffering and the fallout from secrets and violence. Grounded in character and the everyday, they are also richly layered and attuned to history and myth. ... The outstanding story in this collection [is] "In Silhouette" ... This is not a formally experimental collection and even the open-ended stories have a certain neatness; patterns or parallels that tie the narratives up. Sometimes the ironies are a little obvious — the son of a charlatan healer is desperately, incurably ill — and there are a couple of improbable plot twists)
• Storgy (there were a few short stories that I really enjoyed and they are mentioned below, but overall I was left wanting on many. These are the stories that I enjoyed in the collection. "The end of the world is a cul de sac" ... "In Silhouette" ... "Wolf Point" ... "Imbolc" ... "Beyond Carthage". I found that many of the stories just petered out, ... I also found that there wasn’t really anything new in these stories, it felt like I’d heard these stories before, told in a better way)
• Pat Carty