"The Granta book of the Irish short story" by Anne Enright (ed) (Granta, 2010)

In her introduction she writes -

• 'There is in the short story at its most characteristic something we don't often find in the novel, an intense awareness of human loneliness' (Frank O'Connor)
• The novel requires 'the concept of a normal society, and though this, O'Connor seems to say, is available to the English, there is in Irish society a kind of hopelessness that pushes the artist away'
• John Kenny says that the short story has flourished 'in those cultures where older, usually oral forms, are met head on with the challenge of new literary forms equipped with the ideology of modernisation'
• the number of stories about priests and the sadness of priests that have not made it into this volume are legion

The writers were all born since 1899.

• The Road to the Shore (Michael McLaverty) - The sisters are having their yearly trip to the sea. In the chaffeured car they talk, sometimes with emotion, about trees from their childhood. They help a cyclist who's had an accident. The Reverend Mother insists they give the reluctant cyclist a lift to the hospital. They have to postpone their annual day out. The Reverend Mother wants to offer the teetotal cyclist a gardening job.
• The Pram (Roddy Doyle) - 2005. Dublin. Alina (Polish, recently arrived - an au pair) loves the baby she looks after. She liked his sisters less. They tell their mother that Alina has a boyfriend (actually a Lithuanian biochemist who she meets when with the pram). The mother is excitedly nosey. Alina, in revenge, tried to scare the girls with a story about a wicked woman with a pram who stole girls. The girls say the old pram is haunted. Alina begins to believe it. When she scares the girls too much the mother sacks her. She walks with the pram and baby into the sea.
• An Attack of Hunger (Maeve Brennan) - John has left home to become a priest. He was his mother's confidante. She has a boring, restricted marriage to Hubert. When there's an accident while lighting the fire, they blame each other. Then she blames him for John's departure. He says that she turned John against him and he left because he found her too smothering. She leaves the house then realising she has nowhere to go, returns, consoling herself that she might eventually look after John's house when he's given a parish. [At times a little too wordy. I like how my sympathies wavered]
• Summer Voices (John Banville) - a brother and sister escape from an old relative reading a religious tract and cycle to the sea where Jimmy, and old man, shows them a body recovered from the water. Back home, the sister says that they saw the drown man on a hill when they were cycling. She's scared in bed that night.
• Summer Night (Elizabeth Bowen) - 30 pages - easily the book's longest story. Emma is on a long drive. Meanwhile Queenie (deaf) and her single, holidaying brother Justin (40ish) make a surprise visit to Robinson's house. Justin wants to know Robinson better. Robinson, rich, lives apart from his wife and 2 children. Back at Emma's house the Major is checking on the 2 children. Aunt Fran is religious and doom-ridden. Justin and Queenie leave. Justin writes a letter to Robinson apologising for the awkward evening. Emma arrives at Robinson's house for the night.
• Music at Annahullion (Eugene McCabe) - Annie, Liam and Teddy live together? Teddy (who hasn't confessed for 40 years) and Liam are brothers. Teddy (I think) buys a clapped out piano but it doesn't fit in the house. Eventually it's smashed up.
• Naming the Names (Anne Devlin) - She works in a big second-hand bookshop in the Falls Rd, Belfast. When a young researcher from Oxford arrives she starts sleeping with him. She says she has a lover Jack. The researcher's father' is a judge. He has a fiancee Sue back in Oxford. He's says he's going to marry Sue but he loves the narrator. He's found dead. During the police interview we learn that she lured him to his murder. She's known Jack, an English journalist for years. She's been delivering IRA money to wives of's interns. She knows them by the codenames, chanted thoughout the story like section names on the bookshelves.
• Shame (Keith Ridgway) - In the age of sailing ships, a man with (perhaps unfathful?) wife and child decides not to continue working for his boss. [I'm confused]
• Memory and Desire (Val Mulkerns) - Bernard, a rich owner of an old glass-works, feels appreciated by a TV crew led by young Martin. Bernard's brother died at sea. His wife left him 5 years before with his daughter. He may be gay. When the TV crew are about to leave, he invites Martin to Greece. Martin's married with kids. Bernard goes out in a boat knowing there'll be a storm.
• The Mad Lomasneys (Frank O'Connor) - Spirited Rita Lomasney and posher Ned were 12 and 14 when they started being friends. Rita went away, became a teacher at a convent, then got sacked because a man wanted to give up a priesthood career because of her. He was 300 pounds in debt to his mother who said he'd have to repay it if he was giving up the priesthood. Rita returns home and meets Ned who says he'll give her the money. She says she'd have married him if he'd asked earlier. Justin, a lawyer, is interested in her too. Her mother suddenly arranges for Rita to be a nun in England. At her farewell party she gets proposals. She marries Justin. Later, pregnant, she admits that her choice of husband had been rather random. It was difficult to compare different types of affection for men.
• Walking Away (Philip O Ceallaigh) - only 4 pages. It begins with "Her telephone number remained in the pocket of his funeral trousers for over two weeks". He's having depersonalisation symptoms. Eventually he phones her, goes round to her house. He knows he won't become attached to her. She's written a novel, done AmDram, visited Thailand and wondered about what's beyond. They spend the night together. We learn that the funeral was of an old friend. Next day he leaves early, having recovered.
• Villa Maria (Clare Boylan) - Sally and Rose are on holiday in Palma. They talk about men, attraction and their future. Rose dreams of houses with pools, and a TV in the bedroom. When American sailors arrive, the 2 girls take 2 of them to their room. The men show them family photos, and photos of girlfriends. The girls are bored. Rose pulls a man onto her. It's not clear whether they have full sex. Later the men play like boys in the hotel pool before walking back to their ship. Rose follows them from a distance.
• Lilacs (Mary Lavin) - 24 pages. On the day Phelim proposed to Ros, he had the idea of collecting dung from farmers and selling it to townsfolk. The idea worked, and they sent their daughters Kate and Stacy to boarding school. The girls are home now. The dung arrives each Wednesday, stinking the place out. Stacy in particular hates it. For the first time, Ros suggests to Phelim that they stop. Phelim suddenly dies. Ros feels guilty. She keeps the dung trade going. Perhaps they could plant lilacs to disguise the smell. But they'd take years to mature. Then Ros suddenly dies. Kate thinks that they should move and collect 3 times the amount of dung. She marries a farmer and moves away. Alone, Stacy decides to plant lilac trees where the dung had been piled. [A neat plot]
• Meles Vulgaris (Patrick Boyle) - The title means "Badger". A man in bed with his wife recalls their honeymoon when they saw badger baiting. He's reading a book about badgers, from which we get extracts. He ignores her advances. She suggests they should return to their honeymoon location. The badgers were tenacious. A Father was among the dog owners.
• The Trout (Sean Faolain) - About 3 pages. A girl finds a trout in a quart of water, wondering how it got there, what it ate. She releases it into the river, telling her little brother that a fairy godmother released it. [I don't get it]
• Night in Tunisia (Neil Jordan) - He (14), his sister and his sax-playing father are on holiday. He plays the piano. He befriends the older boys who fancy his sister. There's a 17 y.o. girl, poor, who lives there all year. Her drunk father is often away. He watches her play tennis with a man and go off in his car. A local boy says she's a whore. He doesn't know what that is. His father thinks he's wasting his musical talent and offers to pay him if he lets his father give him piano lessons. [Episodic, poetic, with much unsaid. I like it]
• Sister Imelda (Edna O'Brien) - The narrator (18?) and her friend Baba are in their last year at convent school. Sister Imelda has returned from 4 years at Dublin University. Why has she returned? It's a strict sect. She gives the narrator little gifts. She says she misses the narrator when a new term starts, then says that it's wrong and becomes distant. The other girls notice that the narrator is no longer Imelda's pet. The narrator's sad, decides to become a nun. But then she goes to Dublin university with Baba and gives up the nun idea. On a bus trip, made up, they notice Imelda and another nun on the bus. The narrator is shaken, but the nuns get off before the narrator steels herself to talk to them.
• The Key (John McGahern) - A father living in barracks with his kids thinks he's going to die. He tells the first-person character (his son or daughter) what to do when he dies, giving him/her a key to his chest. He's sent to hospital, returns, and the son/daughter throws away the key. [I don't get it]
• A Priest in the Family (Colm Toibin) - A priest visits Molly to tell her that her son is going to plead guilty to indecency charges going back 20 years. He leaves and her daughters (who have sons) visit, suggesting that she go to the Canaries during the trial. She has a busy social life and wants to stay, wants her friends to talk to her rather than avoid her. Later, her son visits, saying that she should go to the Canaries. She says she's ok and watches him drive off [Can't see much in it]
• The Supremacy of Grief (Hugo Hamilton) - Damien's drunk. His wife Sarah died 5 years before. His sisters have cleared away Sarah's possessions. They've taken him to stay with his family in Dublin. They avoid talking about Sarah. He mentions her, saying that there was something he'd wanted to tell her. He's jokey with the kids. He plays dead, very dead. He's not dead. [I don't get it]
• The Swing of Things (Jennifer C Cornell) - a widower leaves his daughter (9 - her first-person PoV)) and demented father with a stuntman who's just turned up to say that the old man won a stunt. The stuntman tells anecdotes that the old man contributes to, then jumps off the house and survives. [An interesting set-up. The 8 y.o. thinks about "the thoughtful perambulations of the silent instructor ... this is why we fall in love: because we need another's eyes to convince us we remain things of beauty, because without another's tongue to tell us we assume such words cannot be said"]
• Train Tracks (Aidan Mathews) - Timmy, 12, is on a plane from Dublin to Dusseldorf without a guardian. He's going to stay with a German family for 10 weeks. Before, someone tells him that the allies didn't bomb the train tracks to Auchwitz, and that Luther was thought be some to have been as bad as Hitler. While there, he uses a piece of toy train track to move a piece of his unflushable poo. His host family start hitting each other when the track is found.
• See the Tree, How Big It's Grown (Kevin Barry) - A man, 50, wakes on a coach not knowing who or where he is. He finds that he's rented a chipper in the next town. He has flashbacks about his youth. He drinks. He is liked at an open-mic sing-song. He finds simple beauty in these new surroundings. [I like it]
• Visit (Gerald Donovan) - Luke, jetlagged, is visiting his mother in her carehome. She wants to be wheelchaired to the nearest village. He thinks people are staring at him as he pushes her along a pavementless road, pumps up the tyres at a garage and buys her sweets. At the end "She was smiling. Her eyes were closed and her face was calm, turned to the sun" [Neat and moving. Rather short though - less than 6 pages]
• Everything in this Country Must (Colum McCann) - a 15 y.o girl and farmer father try to pull their horse from a flooded river. Her mother and brother had beenkilled by an army truck. An army vehicle stops. 6 soldiers get out and help, bravely saving the horse. The girl offers tea after. The ungrateful father asks them to leave. He goes out with a gun. She hears shots. He's killed the horse [Poetic language. I've read this in the story collection of the same name, and in "The Art of the Story: An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories". I remain impressed. The child feels powerless against fatalism - "Stevie and the draft horse were going to die, since everything in this county must". Perhaps the father knew that the horse was too injured to survive anyway.]
• Curfew (Sean O'Reilly) - Men are in a dark room. Fergal's brother Eamon is back after 4 years. Fergal's teased about having a girlfriend, Nuala (Huala on p.365). Fergal's told to stay indoors while the rest go out. He goes out, meets Nuala. They see something happening at a farm. They go there and he gets caught. He and Harkam had made a hidden lair. Had Harkham shown it to a girl, a gipsy? The men return to the house. [I'm often irritated by stories where the reader's the only person who doesn't know what's going on. I liked this though.]
• Language, Truth and Lockjaw (Bernard MacLaverty) - Norman, a philosphy lecturer, is on holiday with his family. He's suddenly had to have a tooth extracted. They've rented a place next to where some mentally challenged men stay. He wants to write a paper. After 9 years his marriage is going stale. His wife tries to engage him in conversation - does intelligence encourage vivid emotion? During sex (which they still enjoy) his jaw locks open. He sounds like their neighbours. His wife sorts him out. [I grew to like it]
• Midwife to the Fairies (Eilis Ni Dhuibhne) - A stranger knocks late at a married nurse's door to ask her to help his wife who's in labor. He drives her 10 miles to an isolated farmhouse. She delivers the 5lb baby and says it should be taken to hospital. A week later she reads that the baby's been fond dead and the mother arrested. The nurse tells the police. She's threatened at knifepoint so retracts her statement. Scattered in this story are about 4 lines of italicised text, telling a fairy-taled version of the events.
• Men and Women (Claire Keegan) - She works on the farm for her father while her brother Seamus studies for school. Her mother, like nearly all the women she knows, can't drive. Her parents sleep in different rooms. She (her first-person PoV) still believes in father Christmas. They go to a New Year's Eve event. Her father dances with other women. Old men want to dance with her. On the drive home her mother wins a psychological game of power. [I like it]
• Mothers Were All the Same (Joseph O'Connor) - Arriving at Luton from Dublin, he sees Catriona who'd been on the same flight. He'd met her at a party. He's come to find a job. She just over for the weekend. She invited him to her cheap hotel near Kings Cross. She says she's in a good relationship. They sleep together. She disappears for the day, comes back emotional, sick. She disappears again. The hotelier tells him that she's had an abortion. [I suspected Catriona's purpose quite early, but I don't see why the persona should have guessed it as early as I did. It could indeed have been food poisoning]
• The Dressmaker's Child (William Trevor) - Cahal (19) helps his dad in the garage. A Spanish couple ask if he could give them a lift to a miracle statue of the virgin Mary. He rips them off. On the drive back he thinks he might have hit the dressmaker's mentally retarded daughter, who has a habit of running out to cars. He worries overnight. There's no news. A few days later the girl's body is found. The dressmaker, 12 years older than him, tells him that he knows he was driving the car, and suggests that they should marry. A year later, Cahal's girlfriend marries somebody else. He wonders if the dressmaker killed her daughter. He knows that one day he'll go to her.