"Wifey Redux" by Kevin Barry (2012, 20 pages, from Dark Lies the Island)

"Wifey Redux" is the second story in Kevin Barry's collection of short stories, Dark Lies the Island.  It is a painfully realistic account of the twenty year course of a marriage as well as a very darkly funny account of life during the years of the Celtic Tiger.  We meet the husband and narrator of the story at age 17.   He and his wife seem the perfect couple in the ideal marriage.  They buy a townhouse and it goes up eight times in value as he rises in the Irish civil service.  Three years into the marriage there only child, a daughter, is born.  Of course the child changes the marriage.   Barry quickly takes us forward 17 years.   Their daughter is now incredibly sexy with a boy friend he father very  much dislikes.  His wife seems pretty much a zoned out alcoholic by now oblivious to what is going on in the life of her daughter.  Reading this story makes me eager to read the rest of the collection.