Shauna Gilligan Two New Short Stories from the author of Happiness Comes from Nowhere

Posts by and about Shauna Gilligan

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Shauna Gilligan, author of Happiness Comes from Nowhere, is an author whose work I have been following for over a year now.  In addition to posting on her wonderful novel, I have shared my thoughts on a number of her marvelous short stories with my readers.   She has also contributed several guests posts to The Reading Life, including an introductory post to my on going project on the work of Desmond Hogan.  She also contributed a very informative Q and A Session during Irish Short Story Month Year III.

I was very happy when I found she has recently published two more short stories (both of which can be read online)

"Remains"   is a brief work that centers on the marriage of a woman to a man twenty six years her senior.   The opening line of the story caught my attention:  "Our house is full of dead people's furniture".   I have said before that there is a strong preoccupation, almost a love, for death in much of Irish literature.  She lives in the house where her husband lived with his first wife.   The woman, I think, married a much older man in the buried somewhere in the darker regions of her psyche hope he will die much earlier than she does so she can spend many years with a dead man as the leading person in her life.  "Remains" lets us see how things take on  life of their own.  It also sharply depicts the need of the new wife to make the grand house they live in her own, building up a shield for the long forthcoming time of the domination of death over life.

You can read this story at Olentangyreview.com.

"Bachelor's Beep" centers on a woman, fifty years of age, with six children.   She struggles to make ends meet and when we first meet her she has just been rejected as a renter of a house that would have been perfect for them.  The landlord did not want that many kids in his house.   She is separated from her husband.   There is a lot in this story and my main purpose in this post is to let my readers know of this new story.  I greatly enjoyed it and recommend it as very much worth your time.

(You can read this story at Thegalywayreview.com)


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