Irish Short Story Month XIII
March and April - 2024
Today's Story, "A Pure Dote"' by Tadhg Coakley, a resident of Cork originally from Mallow, is the second of the eighteen stories
included with Cork Stories - Edited by Madeleine D’Arcy & Laura McKenna - 2024 -
It is my intention to post upon each of the stories.
"A Purple Dote" focuses on what happens within a family when the forty year old father develops early dementia. Coakley with depressing at times vermilitude details how it changed the marriage, how his children forced into being a parent to their father reacted. The family had been financially secure before but now the wife must deal with government and medical authorities to survive.
"‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me?’ Try telling that to someone diagnosed with early onset dementia in the prime of his life, with a wife and three young kids and a mortgage. Try telling it to his wife and children, his friends and family. Then you’ll know what hurt is. Nuala knew what hurt was. Hurt was the love of your life turning into a helpless child, so that you have to look after him every day and sleep beside him every night and feed him and wash him..entitlement, every support, waiting on phone lines, standing in queues, filling out online forms, swallowing the shame of the hand-outs she never in her life expected that she would be forced to accept."
From website of Tadhg Coakley
"I am the author of five books, Before He Kills Again (Mercier Press, 2023), The First Sunday in September (Mercier, 2018); Whatever It Takes (Mercier, 2020), the 2020 Cork One City, One Book choice; and the autobiography of Denis Coughlan, called Everything (Hero Books, 2020) which I co-wrote. My fourth book The Game: A Journey into the Heart of Sport (2023) was shortlisted as Sports Book of The Year.
My short stories, articles, and essays have been published in The Stinging Fly, The Winter Papers, The Irish Examiner, The Irish Times, The42.ie, Aethlon, The Holly Bough, The Honest Ulsterman, Quarryman, Silver Apples and elsewhere."
https://tadhgcoakley.ie/
Whether you are just getting started in Irish Short Stories or have been and avid reader for fifty years, Cook Stories, published by Doire Press, will delight you with 18 Stories.
The best way to purchase this marvelous collection is via the Publisher Doire Press
https://www.doirepress.com/
1 comment:
What a difficult situation. It sounds like quite a read.
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