A masterclass display of versatility...mood and style in these richly concise, crisply written pieces are confidently varied, too...adding vitality to the virtuosity is a terrific ear for idiomatic speech

O’Connor’s first collection of short stories for 20 years reasserts a mastery of the form... An exhilarating array of sharp dialogue and biting one-liners... A fine compassionate collection

Full of lovely, delicate perceptive stuff. Joseph O'Connor is in the tradition of masterly Irish writers of short fiction

Joseph O'Connor's first short story collection in more than 20 years is worth the wait

Playful but also at times sorrowful; it allows in great quantities of life, offering the dramas at times a dark edge but also the full glory of our earthly confusion.

O’Connor handles poignancy and melancholy with such assurance

Superb – very moving and also very sharp… O’Connor has a lovely touch for the nuances of important moments

Some mischievous, caustically funny stories alongside those with a more melancholy spirit

Subtle and beautiful, poignant and perceptive... A fabulous assortment, that will move its readers both to tears and to laughter

The seven short stories and one titular novella in this collection are studies of pained love, bereavement, mental disturbance, suicide, economic hardship and thwarted ambition. But this is not a bleak book, and the final novella, despite its grim themes of loss and mental illness, ends in wistful harmony. There is a gentleness and a fellow feeling extended to these bruised lives of quiet despair

O’Connor’s pin-sharp descriptions are beautifully contrasted with the stark simplicity of the stories, but he teaches a masterclass in what’s better left unspoken, whether the death of a child too raw to detail or the story of a mother “too painful to tell here”. Individually these stories are quietly unassuming gems; together, a powerful ode to modern Ireland

A master at work

Ireland's greatest storyteller

A masterclass in versatility... Atmospheric vignettes bring O’Connor’s prose close to poetry... His terrific ear for idiomatic speech makes dialogue sizzle off the page... This outstanding collection exhibits the continuing vitality of the great Irish tradition of richly concise, crisply written stories that Joyce’s work began

An exhilarating array of sharp dialogue and biting one-liners worthy of Hugh Leonard, his fiction charts the fragility of relationships, the cruelty of chance and circumstance throwing people together only to shatter their lives, the nightmare of distrust and guilt stirred by memory, and the stark fear of separation and being left alone in the stillness of the night

Joseph O’Connor’s first collection of short stories in 20 years sees […] the author once again showcase the kind of effortlessly comic demotic cadences that first endured him to readers

Written with assurance and tenderness […] Joseph O’Connor is in the tradition of masterly Irish writers of short fiction

A multi-layered, thought-provoking collection that might bring with it a bout of sweet nostalgia

A masterclass display of versatility... mood and style in these richly concise, crisply written pieces are confidently varied, too... adding vitality to the virtuosity is a terrific ear for idiomatic speech

A writer who reveals the power of the short story to speak for our time

O’Connor is a gifted storyteller… [He] has a wonderful ear for dialogue and is a master of the telling phrase

This collection is beautiful; full of pure, simple truths that linger long in the mind