Stories by Contemporary Irish Women (Irish Studies) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0815602499 ISBN 13: 9780815602491

Publisher: Syracuse University Press, 1990

Synopsis

These short stories invite the reader to see Ireland afresh. Included are works by well-known authors such as Mary Lavin, Edna O'Brien, and Julia O'Faolain; the collection also showcases new writers such as Clare Boylan, Rita Kelly, and Una Woods.

Repeatedly, the stories bring us up against the inherent contradiction of provincial Ireland and Ireland as a modern European state, and the complexities of women's lives in both. Helen Lucy
Burke writes tellingly of an older, devout Irish Catholic woman as she encounters the startling realities of Italian Catholic Rome. Other stories also dwell on traditional Irish themes and situations through refreshingly varied voices.

Ita Daly movingly portrays the problems of an educated, sensitive schoolteacher, resigned to her life in a country town. Anne Devlin handles yet another familiar theme: the Irelander in England, an England edgy about IRA bombings. A few stories deal with the "troubles" in Northern Ireland, while others address the troubles of the country as a whole: too many children, too much hypocrisy, too little communication, especially between women and men.

The editors have provided an introduction that examines the role of women writers in Irish literature. T-hey have also supplied detailed biographical notes for each contributing author.

About this title

About the Author:

Daniel J. Casey is Vice President of Academic Affairs and Academic Dean, College of Our Lady of the Elms, and coeditor of Modern Irish American Fiction: A Reader (Syracuse University Press, 1989).

Linda M. Casey has studied and taught English as a second language in Finland, Ireland, and Italy.

From Publishers Weekly:

In a perceptive if often somber collection of 17 tales, featuring veterans and newcomers alike, Mary Beckett's "Saints and Scholars" takes the form of an angry dialogue between a wife and her mother-in-law--bitter, disappointed women mired in a destructive relationship with the man who binds them together. F. D. Sheridan's "The Empty Ceiling" conjures a woman deeply disturbed by the bombing death of a boy who retreats into an emotional cocoon. The narrator of Edna O'Brien's "A Scandalous Woman" recalls how a childhood friend, beautiful and lively, looked for romance but settled for being "ruined" by a bank clerk, eventually succumbing to madness. The speaker concludes that her country is "a land of shame, a land of murder and a land of strange sacrificial women." Clare Boylan's "Housekeeper's Cut" strikes a lighter note, as a country wife and a London bachelor learn that in an illicit affair it's easier to love when the loved one is miles away. Daniel Casey co-edited Modern Irish-American Fiction: A Reader ; Linda Casey is a freelance anthologizer.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0815602499
• ISBN 13: 9780815602491
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232
• Editor: Casey Daniel, Casey Linda M.