tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20239564442651286722024-03-19T11:39:58.187+08:00The Reading LifeMel uhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08714473754458914681noreply@blogger.comBlogger451212tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2023956444265128672.post-37792677991416359782024-03-18T18:45:00.002+08:002024-03-18T20:15:31.860+08:00"Fire Starter" - A Short Story by Alan McCormick - 2022 - An Irish Short Story Month XIII Work<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Irish Short Story Month XIII </span></h1><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEintjQsbNTVgBkfXuETlf0GQS0SHb6a3Ygm6nfGRdghZvd1FYNACYMfYx0hhG14rkugRDtFlMuvuRtkE8PmoPolJPxSCCbLwV3uIf1ZOxEBkYG5ozFHKx-7Hw3af58_aGMln0XT1XIQo5vU3fKc0zfY5EZJYmAucnEKcQrwxJdbOggIRU494_9DQApTIRkd/s1030/Screenshot_20240317_170511_Google.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1030" data-original-width="852" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEintjQsbNTVgBkfXuETlf0GQS0SHb6a3Ygm6nfGRdghZvd1FYNACYMfYx0hhG14rkugRDtFlMuvuRtkE8PmoPolJPxSCCbLwV3uIf1ZOxEBkYG5ozFHKx-7Hw3af58_aGMln0XT1XIQo5vU3fKc0zfY5EZJYmAucnEKcQrwxJdbOggIRU494_9DQApTIRkd/w530-h640/Screenshot_20240317_170511_Google.jpg" width="530" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: x-large;">"Fire Starter" is the first story by the highly awarded Wiclow resident Alan McCormick to be featured in The Reading Life. Going forward I hope to delve deeply into his work.</span><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">"Fire Starter" is set in an asylum of some sort, the exact location and nature of it are a bit cloked in shadows. Conventional religion is employed as part of the therapy"</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">"Theo thinks he’s Christ. At my first attempt to eat breakfast in the retreat’s communal dining room, he’s shouting:</span><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">‘I can save some of you but I won’t be able to save all of you!’</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">‘That’s fine, Theo, do whatever you can,’ Simon the warden replies, pulling him away</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Later, as I try to eat, I hear sobbing coming from the lounge.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Simon’s head appears around the doorway: ‘Theo has had an unfortunate accident, kids,’ he says, ‘and won’t be staying with us for a while.’</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Simon’s wife, Ursula, wears tight purple leggings that smell of citrus and sandalwood. She looks young for fifty, and speaks as if she’s a WW2 German spy expertly repeating dated bookish English, a Teutonic phrase occasionally intervening between exacting vowels and corrective grammar. She is also a healer.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">I lie on my bed, eyes closed, head propped on a mound of pillows as she kneels beside me, lightly stroking my left temple, my face turned into the soapy incense of her legs, soothing purples filling my eyelids.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">‘Breathe in the calm beautiful energy of God’s nature. God loves you if you are good, and he loves you even more if you are bad. God loves you and so does everyone else.’</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">‘Even Theo?’</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">‘Especially, this Theo,’ she replies."</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">The narrator is a patient, inmate at the asylum. There is a very powerful description of a therapy session.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">I do not want to spoil the plot for first time readers but I do wish to share a bit more the amazing prose of McCormick.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">"Tall red spikes of light jag above a bush behind them, and Theo arrives on the lawn swinging a flaming stick above his head. He runs past Saskia who dances unsteadily around an upturned wheelchair. Sparks scatter, the crackling sound of scorched wood; the pungent smell of sulphur as he gets near to us. Ruth walks purposefully from the house to stand in his way, licks from the stick’s flame reflected in her eyes. She holds out her arms to welcome him. Theo stops and prods the stick toward her, flickers of fire falling to the ground and dying by her feet. She stays still, her arms held open, and smiles. Theo drops the stick and walks slowly into her embrace. She holds him, and then frees one arm to invite me in too."</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">You can read "Fire Starter" and other stories on author's website </span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">https://alanmccormickwriting.com/</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Alan McCormick lives with his family in Wicklow. He’s a Trustee and former writer in residence for InterAct Stroke Support, a charity employing actors to read fiction and poetry to stroke patients.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">His writing has won prizes and been widely performed and published, including recently in The Stinging Fly, Banshee, Southword, Sonder and Exacting Clam magazines, and previously in Salt’s Best British Short Stories, A Wild and Precious Life – A Recovery Anthology, Modern Nature Anthology – Responses to Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature, The Poetry Bus, The Bridport and Fish Prize Anthologies, Popshot, Litro and Confingo.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Work has appeared online at Epoque Press, Words for the Wild, 3:AM Magazine, Dead Drunk Dublin, Trasna, Mono, The Quietus, Fictive Dream, The Willesden Herald and Found Polaroids.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">His story ‘Firestarter’ came second in the 2022 Francis MacManus RTE Short Story Competition and ‘Boys on Film’ came second in The 2023 Plaza Prizes Sudden Fiction competition. Stories in the past have won the Ruth Rendell InterAct Stroke Support Story Competition, The Liverpool International Short Story Competition and the Middlesex Literary Festival Story Prize.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">DOGSBODIES and SCUMSTERS , his collection of short stories with flash shorts inspired by Jonny Voss’s pictures, was published by Roast Books and long-listed for the Edge Hill Prize. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Alan and Jonny also collaborate on illustrated shorts known as Scumsters – see more at Deaddrunkdublin and Scumsters.blogspot </span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div></div>Mel uhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08714473754458914681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2023956444265128672.post-57255305184230757442024-03-15T18:21:00.004+08:002024-03-15T18:23:06.357+08:00"The Big River" - A Short Story by Desmond Hogan - 2017 - An Irish Short Story Month XIii Post<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> Irish Short Story Month XI</span></h1><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_X_k1mnKRshQjXJL-A_O-ymNuj5K_C6BfW5s74lDEBDOh0P6mzBed18arXq0aDw9QmPqSu6oiFjaPH9-leZpPKn5xI30lbCGt7hGrXgmgcrZ6Jix5wTIBnHjlMpzxAiwcmBtt3KIeyOz7Q4yTpLYllgz9S-uXIjqJZA6KY6uFhFjF6YEZuSYu4nJ8Blqg/s576/Screenshot_20240313_121838_Chrome.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="152" data-original-width="576" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_X_k1mnKRshQjXJL-A_O-ymNuj5K_C6BfW5s74lDEBDOh0P6mzBed18arXq0aDw9QmPqSu6oiFjaPH9-leZpPKn5xI30lbCGt7hGrXgmgcrZ6Jix5wTIBnHjlMpzxAiwcmBtt3KIeyOz7Q4yTpLYllgz9S-uXIjqJZA6KY6uFhFjF6YEZuSYu4nJ8Blqg/w640-h168/Screenshot_20240313_121838_Chrome.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Today's Story, "The Big River" is included in the most recent collection of short stories by Desmond Hogan, The History of Magpies.</span><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Shauna Gilligan's Highly Illuminating Introduction to Desmond Hogan</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">http://rereadinglives.blogspot.com/2012/06/desmond-hogan-irelands-most-famous.html</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">I have been reading Desmond Hogan for 12 years now. I take his work very seriously. I was first introduced to his work by Shauna Gilligan, PhD, author of Happiness Comes From Nowhere. Through her kindness I met Hogan in May of 2003, at the office of Lilliput Press. We spoke of two authors for whom we share great admiration, Nathaneal West and Zora Hurston, among other things.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">"We were here when the Christians first came to Ireland and we will be here when they leave" - A proverb of Irish Travellers </span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">A considerable portion of the work of Desmond Hogan focuses on Irish Travellers. Irish travellers have an ancient history. They Are acknowledged as an ethnic group.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Travellers play an important part in "The Big River", numerous suicides mostly by hanging are alluded to in the story,</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">"‘Shannon Crotty was my cousin. He hung himself. His wife Ethlinn Flavin from Knocknaheeny in Cork hung herself before him. Her brother Besty hung himself in between them. A lot of Travellers are hanging themselves now. One man because he had cancer. A girl because she was pregnant and did not want her father to know it."</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">(Amusingly in the Comedy TV series Derry Girls Travellers are depicted as dangerous and terrifying.)</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Hogan makes extensive use of colour and references to historical-cultural entities in "The Big River" which I find fascinating:</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">"In their trailer the newly weds had a picture of two elephants kissing, horns wrapped around one another’s trunks: a photograph of Santa Claus presenting a cup for hurling to Shannon as a child, in a black bow tie; the dead Hunger Striker Martin Hurson with miner’s locks, white shirt, white tie, smile reserved for weddings; a statue of Saint Patrick with ashen hair and peach lips; a parrot with flaked red head; a pair of beige polka-dot wellingtons; a donkey and four Edwardian children, boy in young Edward VIII cap, clinging to a little girl’s waist on top of the donkey"</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">I hope to post on other stories by Desmond Hogan during ISSM XIII.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Mel Ulm</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><br /></div>Mel uhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08714473754458914681noreply@blogger.com1