"Surge" (Brandon, 2014)

Short stories by Irish Creative Writing students and their teachers.

• Birthday boys (Fergus Cronin) - He returns for Xmas to Ireland where his 2 brothers still live on the farm. They're all single. He's been in London for 40 years. Their father's long dead. Their mother died 10 years before. Each year they've been bringing their share of her ashes, without telling each other. This year they finally spread them.
• Undocumented (Mary Morrissy) - Shay's been living illegally in New York for 12 years. He manages a bar. His girlfriend (also without a permit) is pregnant without having asked him first. When an invitation arrives for his brother Brian's 50th birthday party in Ireland (a surprise one organised by his bossy wife Fee. He's "loyal as a kicked dog"), he uses it as an excuse to escape. His other brother Dec, quiet (he helps run the family hardware store with Brian), has a new dishy partner, Colette. Their parents are dead. Shay hadn't returned since he left - not even for their father's funeral. Upstairs at the party Colette and Shay suddenly have sex. They slip. She might have broken her nose. She's quiet about the incident. He half-confesses to Brian. Fee plays it down, saying the Colette is pregnant. He's thought of running away back to the States but might now decide to stick to his plan to stay. [the sex seems too unlikely]
• Goldfinch in the snow (Eilis Ni Dhuibhne) - Davina's a young foreigner in Dublin. A taxi driver rapes her - though she was drugged(?) so she doesn't recall much. She recalls moments from her childhood. Less than 7 pages. My favourite so far.
• No one knows us here (Claire Simpson) - John's been conscientiously working as a gardener for 15 years. He has a work friend John. He recalls when he was a new soldier and had to kill. Marcus, John and Robert's ex commander in the army is rumoured to be in town. Will he find them? John gets drunk - unusual for him. Maybe he had saved an enemy woman years before.
• Cleanliness is next to godliness (Darran McCann) - Terry gets messy when helping his kid eat breakfast. He goes to his high-security job - monitoring suspects. He flirts with a colleague and has a good day - he catches some bad people on camera and calls the heavies in, and gets one over on his younger boss. He apologises to his wife for neglecting her. [caring domestic life contrasted with work]
• Charcoal and lemongrass (Ruth Quinlan) - Billy Larsen had been a young soldier in Vietnam when he'd saved a Vietnamese girl. When he later fell into a trap, she tried to save him and was shot by one of his colleagues. Old now, he's returned to Vietnam, married a local, and repeatedly draws the girl who tried to save him, whitewashing the drawing each time.
• Country feedback (Mike McCormack) - A milk lorry crashes. The milk flows into a river, killing most of the stock of fish that he and his wife Eibhlin have been building up for years. She says it could be worse - the lorry driver might not survive. She consoles him with sex. She injects herself in her stomach. He offers to help but she says there's nothing he can do. In the evening he plays in a pub band. It goes well. When he gets home he wants her to play a tune. She cries. She's had another disappointment. Is she trying for children? Or does she have life-threatening problems?
• Celestial orbit (Bridget Sprouls) - Trevor's 8 years younger than wild sister Celeste, who's come home for a while. They live with their mother who regrets turning down a life-changing opportunity in her youth. Celeste's short of money - she can't hold down a job. Trevor mistakenly accuses her of stealing his credit card, telling his mum - he's been saving to buy a surfboard, to change his life. Celeste has brought back her paintings, which are grotesque. Mum cries, having failed to find a place that will try to sell the paintings.
• Yehudit (Paula McGrath) - Chicago. Judy's star piano pupil Kane, 6, is too poor to fulfill his potential. She's well off, married to a car dealer. Her son had that potential but his father made him do sport instead. Now he's a farmer who doesn't visit often enough. Yehudit was 6 when she arrived in the States with her mother, unable to speak English. At school they called her Judy. When her mother became ill she stopped school and sold house items to survive. She married after her mother died, got sad when she was childless, was given a piano by her husband, then became pregnant. Judy teaches a useless pupil then waits for Kane who doesn't turn up for his lesson.
• Paprika (Frank McGuinness) - The first-person persona's a 50+ opera singer singing Otello in New York. Someone said sprinkling paprika on food would make him lose weight. It made him fatter, and sing better. He believes that the stage is the only place for emotions. He's given up sex and alcohol. He prefers nougat. He passes a young couple in the couple. She tries to hug him. He sprays paprika in her eyes.
• The Letter (Colin Corrigan) - James is writing a suicide letter. He works at Dublin Modern Art museum. He doesn't like the job or the Art. His mother's long-term boyfriend Derek got him the job. In the gallery he meets Annie, his girlfriend from university. She has twins of about 5 now. We learn that he had a nervous breakdown while doing a Theology PhD. He tells her that he's going to kill himself. A year earlier he'd started his letter - 179 pages long. He burned it. He writes a short one - we see it 6 times in different fonts. His mother books a therapy session for him. She has a heart attack and dies. He burns the latest suicide note and says he doesn't need therapy.
• Quality Time (Madeleine D'Arcy) - He's paralysed in an Irish hospital after a stroke. His daughter Trisha arrives from London. He's not seen her since her mother left with her 30 years before. She's about 40 now. She tells him that her mother died 2 years before. She rages at him for abusing her and her friend. She gets scissors out, threatening to cut his tubes or his genitals. After she leaves, he's rather impressed by her verve.
• The Late Bite (Gina Moxley) - Mr Holmes is 85 and has 6 months to live. His 4 children take turns to visit, making it look random. They're already wondering about who gets what. His wife died 8 years before. Jimmy, in his 30s, turns up. They'd taken him in when his single mother died. He'd been in prison - Holmes had visited him there 12 years before, the last time they'd met. Holmes goes to bed, thinking about changing his will while Jimmy mows the neglected garden.
• Heroes (Sheila Llewellyn) - Moscow, 1998. The first-person protagonist has been 2 months in Moscow, teaching students. He's friendly with a Russian mother and grandmother. In 1960 he was 12. His father had fun in the West Indies, sending his son to school in England, dying when his son was at Manchester University. His uncle was a Trade Unionist, supporting Russia. He recalls Gagarin (a hero), The Cuban Crisis. Dashed hopes.
• The Gravedigger (Helena Kilty) - A young mother digs her grave at an Irish farm and spends a night in there, during which she recalls significant events, most notably when a man wandered in front of her car and she killed him. Next morning the farm owner helps her out to start a new life.
• The Healer (Derek Flynn) - Junk collects in a heap on a beach - a subject of village gossip. Overnight it becomes a hovel. A man there cures first Joe then other locals of their ailments. When outsiders come for help he ignores them. He disappears. The hovel becomes a shrine for outsiders. It burns down. One day he returns. He offers Joe more medicine for his gout. Joe turns it down. The healer apologises for the disruption he's caused, then walks away.

Goldfinch in the snow and Yehudit may be my favourites.

Other reviews

• Sarah Gilmartin (Dead voices often control the living ... Violence is commonplace in these stories)