That Old Country Music

Description

Since his landmark debut collection, There Are Little Kingdoms in 2007, and its award-winning sequel in 2012, Dark Lies the Island, Kevin Barry has been acclaimed as one of the world's most accomplished and gifted short-story writers. Barry's lyric intensity, the vitality of his comedy, and the darkness of his vision recall the work of masters of the genre like Flannery O'Connor and William Trevor, but he has forged a style which is patently his own. In this rapturous third collection, we encounter a ragbag of West of Ireland characters, many on the cusp between love and catastrophe, heartbreak and epiphany, resignation and hope. These stories show an Ireland in a condition of great flux but also as a place where older rhythms, and an older magic, somehow persist.

Kevin Barry is the author of three novels and two short story collections. His awards include the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize and the Lannan Foundation Literary Award. His stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta and elsewhere. He also works as a playwright and screenwriter, and he lives in County Sligo, Ireland. His latest novel, Night Boat to Tangier, was an Irish number one bestseller, was longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards.

The master short story teller turns messy emotions into riveting tales of wounded Irish folk . . . One of the best collections you'll read this year * * Sunday Times * * Wild, witty stories . . . The west of Ireland teems with canny characters and vivid language . . . Darkly glimmering . . . Their language is exhilarating, its verve evoking the very best of Barry's compatriots while further carving out a territory that's all his own * * Observer * * These are brilliant and vivid and uproarious stories. It's a rare writer who can call a tune like Kevin Barry -- LISA McINERNEY Barry often writes with sonorous wisdom . . . but as readers of his grimly hilarious novels will know, his language is just as precise when it is in the service of comedy . . . Exhilaratingly funny and poignant fables -- Jake Kerridge * * Sunday Telegraph * * These playful, serious and beautifully crafted stories allow Barry to experiment as we need great writers to do -- SARAH MOSS * * Irish Times * * The third short-story collection from a stylist to savour brings more exhilarating, darkly witty tales of oddballs yearning after love and enchantment in the wild west of Ireland * * Guardian, 50 hottest new books everyone should read * * An extraordinary writer . . . In his short stories Barry seems most fully and brilliantly himself . . . Unimprovable masterpieces . . . So rich and so flawlessly crafted - its best stories feel instantly canonical, as if we've already been reading them for years . . . The opening story is letter-perfect from its first line . . . Funny, moving, built with superior economy, this is the real thing . . . Barry remains the great romantic of contemporary Irish fiction. Like all of the most interesting artists, he gets better with every risk he takes. The courage may be his. But the rewards are all ours -- Kevin Power * * Irish Independent * * Full of the damaged characters, menacing rural scenery and darkly comic, slantwise prose that have become his trademark . . . At each turn, Barry makes his fiction a matter of life and death * * New Statesman * * Optimism and sorrow anchor the stories in this collection, where relationships take unexpected turns and characters befuddle one another and themselves. Barry's writing sparkles, as ever, moving speedily between pathos and humour to great effect * * New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice * * Barry is wickedly funny, slyly transgressive and consistently brilliant. He is constantly turning tricks with language before upending us on the thwarted desires of his characters and the dark energy of his landscapes. And underpinning it all, the melancholy of men that is Barry's hallmark -- MARY COSTELLO Beautifully pitched short stories . . . A richly comic collection from an Irish maestro . . . Barry holds myth-making and dull reality in teasing balance, with a kind of comic double vision winking at the operatic and the bathetic by turns * * Guardian * * Handled with such delicacy, economy and depth of feeling without sentimentality, the people of this little masterpiece - people flawed, driven and full of longing - were my companions for days after the last paragraph of the story had been read -- WENDY ERSKINE * * Caught by the River * * Imaginative . . . Offers an original, wonderfully offbeat and insightful view into modern Ireland * * Independent * * There's a fluent charm in Kevin Barry's writing even when he's dealing with subjects that are far from charming . . . Barry's deceptively laid-back writing has an assured texture. He makes it look easy, but it is unmistakably deft * * Sunday Times * * Barry returns to what he does best - the short story. He pitches men's paltry inventories of belongings and fragile longings against landscapes rife with dangerous energies to sketch the precarious presence of the male in stories of fabulous language and sudden laugh-out-loud sentences -- Kevin Gildea * * Irish Times, Books of the Year * * A flavoursome treat . . . Stirring tales of madness and murder, heartbreak and folly, bubbling with mischievously dark comedy . . . Throughout, the wild beauty of the Irish landscape is an expressive presence, seeping its enchantment into us just as much as into Barry's gloriously idiosyncratic creations * * Daily Mail * * Some of my happiest fiction-reading hours have been spent in the company of Kevin Barry . . . This collection, written over eight years, takes him deeper into his homeland, the wild places, the old country, to hear its hidden music * * Spectator * * Full of memorably offbeat stories and bizarre characters . . . His collection is an original, insightful window into modern Ireland * * Independent, Best Books of the Year * * A selection of stories written over the past eight years on Barry's inimitable weather-drenched canvas, populated by a restless and heartbroken cast made vital through his lightly dazzling sentences -- Keith Duggan * * Irish Times * * Simmering with his trademark impatient energy and flair for dark comedy . . . There's a sense of confidence and control in all of the stories, as Barry has spent years honing his craft for striking dialogue and biting humour . . . Sharp and absorbing * * Irish Examiner * * [A] dark take on the romantic impulse * * Financial Times * * Full of the signature dark humour of an author who thrives in the short form * * Irish Times, Books of the Year * * The most exciting Irish short story writer of his generation * * Sunday Times * * Praise for Kevin Barry: The Barry turn of phrase is a true wonder of this world -- MAX PORTER Barry writes with real exuberance * * Sunday Times * * Kevin Barry is one of the most original, daring, and seriously funny writers ever to come out of Ireland. I'd walk a hundred miles for a new Barry book and I would make the happy journey home, laughing -- COLUM McCANN One of the most abundantly talented novelists writing today * * Daily Telegraph * * If prose were gold and diamonds there'd be thousands of hell-bent prospectors heading for the Black Hills of Kevin Barry's glistening, sparkling novel -- SEBASTIAN BARRY Buoyant . . . Barry is such a deft and generous writer * * New York Times * * Kevin Barry is two kinds, if not three kinds, of a genius -- BBC RADIO 4 Barry is a clarvoyant narrator of the male psyche and a consistent lyrical visionary * * Guardian * * Among the next generation of writers - Zadie Smith, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Safran Foer and so on - the one that stands above the rest for ambition, language and sheer verve is Barry . . . If you haven't heard of him yet, you soon will. I'd wager he'll wind up with the Nobel Prize for Literature before he's done * * Evening Standard * * One of the most gifted fiction writers to emerge from the English-speaking world in the new century * * Paris Review * * Reading him, I am given the feeling that I've achieved something, done something good and am being justly remunerated. The brain lights up and grins -- Niall Griffiths * * Spectator * * Extremely talented creator, Kevin Barry, has a fine instinct for the sweet spot where the comforting familiarities of genre blend into the surprises and provocations of art * * New York Times Book Review * * A writer in full command of the possibilities of the form * * Irish Times * *