"The Lovely Miss What’s-Her-Face" by Kevin Barry

The Lovely Miss What’s-Her-Face" by Kevin Barry  (2012)

Irish Short Story Month

Year III

March 1 to March 31

Kevin Barry

Limerick

Plus Some Reflections on Free Books and such

Resources and  Ideas 

Please join us for Irish Short Stories Month III-March 1 to the 31.  All you need do is to  post on your blog about an Irish Short Story and leave me a comment so I can include it in the master post.   

During ISSM2 last year I posted on a wonderful short story by Kevin Barry (1969), "The Fjord of Killary".  My introduction to Barry was "Beer Trip to Llandudno"".  I also read a story from his anthology of short stories Dark Lies the Island, "Atlantic City".  An odd thing happened last year because of my post on "Beer Trip to Llandudno".   The publisher had made the story available for free on Amazon and I mentioned this in my post.   I in fact read it in an anthology I purchased. 

  However a reader of the post saw this and he went to Amazon.com and he found the story was only available to residents of the UK registered on Amazon's UK website.   For some reason this completely infuriated the person and on another blog he launched into a series of comments in which he attacked me as somehow being in league with publishers. He felt I had posted the story just to tease him somehow by saying he could get a free story when he could not.  He suggested that book bloggers in general will praise any work from a publisher as long as they get a lot of free books.   Behind a false name and without an email to respond to (of course) he attacked me in a vicious personal way.  All because he could not get a free copy of a short story.   As his comments became more vicious they were removed from the blog on which they were posted.  He never posted a comment  here and if he had I would have deleted it right away.  I believe in free speech and in the book blog world to me that means you are free to say whatever you want on your own blog, not on someone else's.  To clarify things, I do receive a lot of free books, it took me a long time to have enough readers for publishers to notice me.   I like free books a lot.  I accept all offers to send me a free book, e books only, and I look at every book I get for possible review.  I might get 100 or more books a month and some months I do not post on any of them.  Very rarely do I do a negative review as I post on books partially to help clarify my understanding of them and to help me recall them and I do not wish to do that with a book I do not like.  Just because I do not review a book I am sent does not mean I consciously reject it and I do not have a real methodical way of dealing with the books I get.   Sometimes I just lose track of a book I wanted to read and review and might post on it months after I get it.  If I have told you I will review your work, then I will.   

That being said, this Kevin Barry story, "The Lovely Miss What's-Her-Face" can be read online at the very good publication, Five Dials. (I will place a link at the end of the post.)   

"The Lovely Miss What's-Her-Name" is told in the first person by a man of advanced years living by himself in a one room flat.   He has been living there for thirty four years.   The story opens with him talking to himself about a meal he is cooking, explaining why contrary to most people he sautes onions prior to garlic when cooking Italian dishes.   He begins to think back, we do not know how long ago, to a woman, much younger than him that he invited back to his place for dinner.   He was so excited he has his flat looking like a palace and planned a great meal.  As soon as he woman arrives, she sits on the bed and initiates sex.   It turns out to be a non-starter for the man.   The story  closes with him going back to cooking.   He is an outpatient at a psychiatric clinic (maybe he is on the dole) and the doctor things the fact that he cannot recall the woman's name, which seems his only such contact in a very long time, is significant.

"The Lovely Miss What's-Her-Name" lets us see just what the life of the man is like.  I admit I got hungry during the descriptions of the garlic and onions cooking.   We feel his loneliness and isolation, one so deep he cannot even see it himself.  This is a very good story, just as I knew it would be.

You can read it on Five Dials.   There is also an excellent short story by Lydia Davis in the same issue.  I follow this publication and look forward to new issues.   An author on whom I have posted, and whose writing career I am following,  Noel O' Reagan,  is on the staff of Five Dials. I suggest that it you are into short stories you look at all of the offerings as some of the biggest names in contemporary fiction like John Banville and Nathan Englander (the last winner of the Frank O'Connor Prize for best collection of short stories) are found in Five Dials.  There is even a story by the great Frank O'Connor himself.  His work is still under copyright so this is very generous.  

Mel u