Collected Stories

Description

'Characters all but leap off the page with believability in these marvellous stories of life (and death) in Belfast' Sunday Times 'Characters all but leap off the page with believability in these marvellous stories of life (and death) in Belfast' Sunday Times Melding his native Irish sensibilities to those of his adopted west-coast Scotland, these tales attend to life's big events- love and loss, separation and violence, death and betrayal. But the stories teem with smaller significant moments too - private epiphanies, chilling exchanges, intimate encounters. Each of these extraordinary stories - with their wry, self-deprecating humour, their elegance and subtle wisdom - gets to the very heart of life.

Bernard MacLaverty lives in Glasgow. He has written five previous collections of stories and five novels, including Grace Notes, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Midwinter Break, the Bord Gais Energy Irish Novel of the Year. He has written versions of his fiction for other media - radio and television plays, screenplays and libretti.

Not since J.D. Salinger's For Esme With Love and Squalor have I enjoyed so much a collection of stories. I mean pleasure - real pleasure. -- Paul Durcan * The Cork Examiner * MacLaverty is one of the best practitioners of the genre we have. * New Statesman * His prose is invisible, free of tricks, as though it was your own thoughts. * Observer * Beautifully constructed, minutely observed, filled with the poetry of longing, told with an economy and simplicity which makes their small tragedies even more powerful and moving... MacLaverty has created an imagined Ulster which can stand side by side with Joyce's Dublin. Long may he continue. * Guardian * MacLaverty has a knack for endowing the workaday with a little poetry. * Independent *