World Full of Place and Other Stories - Softcover

Carragher, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0856405957 ISBN 13: 9780856405952

Publisher: Blackstaff Press, 1997

Synopsis

Positioned between the sophisticated present and the primitive, "thinly Christianized" past, the stories in this collection explore the culture shock of new times, new places and shifting moralities. The stories range from Belfast to Montana and span more than a century.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

A first collection of 13 skillfully written but occasionally repetitive stories by an Irish-born American writer who presently teaches at the University of Arkansas. The world of Carragher's fiction is an overwhelmingly masculine one. Many of his characters seek tests of their manhood at crossroads where sexual, and sometimes political, choices must be made. At their weakest, his stories resemble warmed-over Hemingway (``Mud and Sand'') or present overfamiliar images of rural Irish poverty and family conflict (``Women and Men,'' ``Unconsecrated Ground''). But several have a gritty particularity (``The Stump and the Sapling'' and ``Coward'' are notably vigorous), and Carragher memorably depicts contrasts between boys who romanticize violence and warfare and men who endure them, in settings ranging from 19th-century scenes to contemporary envisionings of religious sectarianism and discord. Interestingly, the atypical ``Strange Sounds from a Far-Off Land'' records the surreal experience of a henpecked Americanized ``peasant from the bogs of Ireland'' who, hearing a banshee's wail, senses his father's approaching death, and finds that the loss he'll suffer isn't the one he expects. It's Carragher's best story. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal:

In this accomplished collection of short fiction, set for the most part in small farming villages in Ireland, Carragher explores with great compassion the lives of characters who are poor or come to be defined in some tragic way by Ireland's notorious political realities. Many of the stories focus on individuals struggling against a claustrophobic sense of entrapment, brought about by poverty or political violence that sweeps unexpectedly and savagely into their lives. Only in the final story, for which the collection is named, does a character successfully triumph over these oppressive conditions. But to do so, he must abandon home, family, and country. In the last scene of this powerful story, we see the protagonist, a young man named Teddy, heading for Dublin on a train?and toward a promising "world full of places" away from Ireland. A very strong work; recommended for both public and academic libraries.?Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community-Technical Coll., Ct.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Blackstaff Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0856405957
• ISBN 13: 9780856405952
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192