The subtitle for this volume of short stories is "300 years of Irish Genre Fiction, A History in Stories." The first story is from 1729, "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift. The last story is from 2019, "The Boughs Withered When I Told Them My Dreams" by Maura McHugh.
My husband and I bought this book because we both like short stories and we thought there would be stories that would appeal to both of us in this book. We bought the eBook edition because it is a great price and it is a very large book, at over 1000 pages. Connolly's introduction is very good, very informative. And he has provided lengthy introductions for each author and the story included for that author.
This is a difficult book to describe, so I am going to use the overview at Connolly's web site:
Lemuel Gulliver, Dracula, Narnia — the history of Irish fiction is a history of genre fiction: horror, romantic fiction, science fiction, crime writing, and more. Irish writers have produced pioneering tales of detection, terrifying ghost stories, and ground-breaking women’s popular literature. In a single volume, John Connolly presents the history of Irish genre writing and uses it to explore how we think about fiction itself.
Deeply researched and passionately argued, SHADOW VOICES takes the lives of more than sixty writers — by turns tragic, amusing, and adventurous, but always extraordinary — and sets them alongside the stories they have written to create a new way of looking at genre and literature, both Irish and beyond. Here are vampires and monsters, murderers and cannibals. Here are female criminal masterminds and dogged detectives, star-crossed lovers and vengeful spouses.
I read three stories from the book. None of those stories were my usual reading, but they were all good stories.
"The Man in the Bell" (1821) by William Maginn
This is a very brief story and as such I don't want to tell too much about. A young man is a bell ringer for his church. He relates the events when he got trapped in the belfry when his friends start ringing the bell. Well written.
"The Witching Hour" (1884) Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
Hungerford was a prolific writer of romantic fiction, both novels and short stories. This story is part ghost story, part romance. Three servants have left the employment of the Vernon family. The latest to leave is the cook. The servants have all been scared by an apparition walking around upstairs. Mr. and Mrs. Vernon have a beautiful daughter, Dolores, who is engaged to Frank Harley, who is staying at the Vernon's home. He volunteers to stay up late that night and see if he can view the ghost and solve the problem.
"Fly Away Tiger, Fly Away Thumb" (1953) Brian Moore
The introduction to this story was especially interesting because Connolly explored Brian Moore's life, especially in relation to his writing and gave me lots of recommendations for books to look for. Moore was born in Ireland but later emigrated to Canada. Connolly notes that, in this story, Moore drew on his experiences in Naples during World War II.
The story is very strange, and tells of a magician who is abducted by a gang of outlaws, who demand a huge ransom to return him to his band of performers. He does escape of course. The story has some gruesome aspects, but it was entertaining.
I look forward to trying more stories from this book. I will try more of the earlier stories and some of the stories from contemporary authors.
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