March 1 to March 31
Gerard Beirne
Event Resources-Links to lots of short stories, from classics to brand new works. Everyone is invited participate. If you have any questions on how you might do this please contact me.
Irish Short Story Month Year III is not even a week done yet and I have already discovered nine new to me writers. They run from early 19th century writers like Samuel Lover or Mary Fortune, a woman born in Belfast who was Australia's first author of detective stories to writers hopefully just in the first stages of a long career.
"Fault Lines" by Gerard Beirnes (there will be a link at the close of the post which will allow you to read the story online) is a very interesting story told in the first person by a man who left Ireland a number of years ago. He was glad he left.
He started out in New York City working in the kitchen of an all night restaurant. When he got tired of that he took a bus to California. He got a job working at a landscape firm in Los Angeles. Through that one "lucky" day he met Maybelle on one of his jobs. She was the trophy wife, one of several, of a very wealthy quite older businessman. Soon he was working as his gardener and from there Maybelle got the old man to think it was his idea to make the man her personal assistant. The husband is cruel, domineering and away on business trips most of the time.. Not telling you anything you did not expect, the man and Maybelle become lovers. However, the man always stays her employee. In the course of their very passionate love making she inflicts pain on him.
I do not really want to tell too much of the plot of masterful this story. I will say there are earthquakes, a visits to a huge ancient meteor cavern, a serious crime, and a very difficult decision to be made as the story closes.
It is morally ambiguous story that makes us ponder the beneath surface motivations. I think it is also about living in a culture in which one has no roots. I think this maybe why it is set in Southern California. There are lots of mysteries or things not explained in the story and that is part of its brilliance.
I will quote a bit from the story so you can get a feel for the beautiful prose of Beirne.
Irish Short Story Month Year III is not even a week done yet and I have already discovered nine new to me writers. They run from early 19th century writers like Samuel Lover or Mary Fortune, a woman born in Belfast who was Australia's first author of detective stories to writers hopefully just in the first stages of a long career.
"Fault Lines" by Gerard Beirnes (there will be a link at the close of the post which will allow you to read the story online) is a very interesting story told in the first person by a man who left Ireland a number of years ago. He was glad he left.
"Leaving Ireland had been easy. Leaving a small Donegal town. A small landholding I had no interest in. Leaving home."
He started out in New York City working in the kitchen of an all night restaurant. When he got tired of that he took a bus to California. He got a job working at a landscape firm in Los Angeles. Through that one "lucky" day he met Maybelle on one of his jobs. She was the trophy wife, one of several, of a very wealthy quite older businessman. Soon he was working as his gardener and from there Maybelle got the old man to think it was his idea to make the man her personal assistant. The husband is cruel, domineering and away on business trips most of the time.. Not telling you anything you did not expect, the man and Maybelle become lovers. However, the man always stays her employee. In the course of their very passionate love making she inflicts pain on him.
I do not really want to tell too much of the plot of masterful this story. I will say there are earthquakes, a visits to a huge ancient meteor cavern, a serious crime, and a very difficult decision to be made as the story closes.
It is morally ambiguous story that makes us ponder the beneath surface motivations. I think it is also about living in a culture in which one has no roots. I think this maybe why it is set in Southern California. There are lots of mysteries or things not explained in the story and that is part of its brilliance.
I will quote a bit from the story so you can get a feel for the beautiful prose of Beirne.
"I pulled the zip downwards along the ridge of her spine. I was still in her employment, still serving as her personal assistant. My assistance in his death could even have been construed as a part of my service. Likewise our trip to the canyon. But surely the kiss had changed all that. Unless the provision of comfort and release for a grieving wife was a part of my duty too. For yes, despite her relief at his demise and despite her contribution to it, Maybelle was grieving, grieving for something as yet unclear. She flicked her shoes off her feet into the swimming pool and slipped her dress off her shoulders. I watched the shoes sink heel-down into the warm water. She cocked a glance at me, and I knew that I was expected to undress too. The low howl of a distant coyote lingered in the dense air. We teetered for a moment unclothed on the edge of the pool, then dived in."
I see this story as in the tradition of the Pynchon California novels or the work of Nathaniel West. One can almost feel the watchers at the edge of the world observing us as we read it.
Bio data
Gerard Beirne is an Irish writer who moved to Norway House, a Cree community in Northern Manitoba, in 1999 where he lived for three years. While living there, he interviewed Elders in the community and edited for publication an anthology of those interviews. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University and is a past recipient of The Sunday Tribune/Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year award. He was appointed Writer-in-Residence at the University of New Brunswick 2008-2009 and is a Fiction Editor with The Fiddlehead.
His novel The Eskimo in the Net (Marion Boyars Publishers, London, 2003) was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award 2004 for the best book of Irish fiction and was selected as Book of the Year 2004 by The Daily Express. His most recent novel Turtle was published by Oberon Press, 2009.
His short story “Sightings of Bono” was adapted into a short film featuring Bono (U2) by Parallel Productions, Ireland in 2001 and released on DVD in 2004.
His poetry collection Games of Chance: A Gambler’s Manual has just been published by Oberon Press- Fall 2011. His collection of poetry Digging My Own Grave was published by Dedalus Press, Dublin. An earlier version won second place in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award.
Later on in the month we will feature a Q and A with the author.
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