“The Great Blue Open”. - A Short Story by Ethel Rohan, August 12,2017

The Great Blue Open” by Ethel Rohan

Ethel Rohan on The Reading Life - included is a very interesting Q and A session, my posts on her work and a post by Ethel Rohan

Ethel Rohan’s Website

My main purpose today is to make sure all into quality short stories have the link to a recent story by Ethel Rohan published in the Irish Times, “The Great Blue Open”.

My thoughts on Ethel Rohan, from March 2014

“Last year I read a story, "Beast and the Bear" by Ethel Rohan, a totally new to me at the time  writer.    I read it during Emerging Irish Women Writers Week.   I never expected to read a story during this week that I would end up regarding as belonging with the greatest short stories of all time.  I read it four times in a row I was so amazed.   Since I read that story for the first time, I have read, I estimate, at least 1000 other short stories including most of the consensus best short stories in the world.  After reading "Beast and the Bear"  again yesterday and this morning I am completely convinced it should already be counted among the world's greatest short stories.  I was in fact so shocked by the power of this story that I wanted to be sure I was not overreacting.  I sent a fellow book blogger whose taste I know to be exquisite and educated through decades of reading short stories and she said only the very best short stories she had ever read, she is noted lauthority on Virginia Woolf, could compare to it.   I know this sounds hyperbolic but it is how I feel.  I do not lightly say a short story written by an author I had never heard of the day before I read it belongs with the work of the greatest of short story writers but that is my opinion.  In a way I felt a sense of satisfaction in that I am open enough in my perceptions and judgments to be able to make such an assertion.”

Since I wrote this Rohan has published three collections of short stories, a memoir about Dublin and a highly reviewed debut novel, The Weight of Him.

Today’s story opens in a Dublin park.  A young mother is pushing one of her daughters on a swing.  Then something is wrong

““Higher,” Sorcha begs. I put everything I have into my next push and right as my arms extend I am gripped by pelvic cramps and spurt blood. Sorcha complains that I’ve stopped pushing her, but then realises something is wrong. She jumps from the swing, calling to her older sister.

Maeve runs toward me, her little face creased with panic. Despite being the eldest, she is our nervous child, afraid of monsters in her pillow, bacteria eating her flesh, her bellybutton popping open, and everything else her imagination serves up to terrorise her. My uterus contracts again and a large, warm clot leaves me. The gelatinous blood streaks down my bare calves in much the same red as the king swan’s beak. I feel like I’m emptying. Feel like it won’t stop.

The heavy bleeding persists over the next several days. I grasp at benign explanations – early menopause or harmless fibroids – anything to defer an invasive exam and possibly sinister results. My husband, Damien, insists I go to the doctor and get myself sorted.”

Rohan does a very good job letting us inside the mind of the narrator.  Her doctor takes a biopsy, it will be a few days before the results come back.  As you would imagine these are long stressing days.  The narrator begins to think about her mother.  She was a wonderful cook.  Her never realised dream in life was to start a restaurant.  Her fate, unknown the narrator does not want to die with her own dream unrealised.

Rohan brings the family to life.  It was fun to listen in on her conversation, she is a solicitor, with a difficult client.  Her husband seems a decent man.

The ending, which I will leave unspoiled was emotionally gratifying and moving.

I will be soon posting on her novel and will continue following her career.

Any fan of short stories will enjoy “The Great Blue Open”.

From the author’s website 

“Ethel Rohan’s writing often centers on the body—its joys, secrets, memory, urges, splendor, and horrors. When she writes, she’s stolen away.

Rohan’s first novel, The Weight of Him, published from St. Martin’s Press (US) and Atlantic Books (UK) in 2017. The Weight of Him won a Northern California Publishers and Authors’ (NCPA) Award and a Silver Nautilus Award, was shortlisted for the Reading Women Award, won the inaugural Plumeri Fellowship, and was named an Amazon Best Book, among other distinctions.

She is also the author of two story collections, Goodnight Nobody and Cut Through the Bone, the former longlisted for The Edge Hill Prize and the latter longlisted for The Story Prize. She wrote, too, the award-winning chapbook Hard to Say (PANK, Editor Roxane Gay) and the award-winning e-memoir single, Out of Dublin (Shebooks, Editor Laura Fraser).

Rohan was longlisted for The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, winner of the Bryan MacMahon Short Story Award, and shortlisted for the CUIRT, Roberts, and Bristol Short Story Prizes. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, World Literature Today, PEN America, The Washington Post, Tin House Online, The Irish Times, and GUERNICA, among many others. She has reviewed books for New York Journal of Books, and elsewhere.

Her stories have also published in various anthologies including Without You: Living With Loss (Ballpoint Press, 2018); Reading the Future: New Writing from Ireland (Arlen House, 2018; THE LINEUP: 20 Provocative Women Writers (Black Lawrence Press, 2015); Winesburg, Indiana (Indiana University Press, 2015); DRIVEL: Deliciously Bad Writing by Your Favorite Authors (Penguin: Perigee, 2014). She is also a contributor and associate editor to the anthology Flash Fiction International (W.W. Norton, 2015).

Rohan has taught writing or was a featured author at Listowel Writers’ Week, Belfast Book Festival, The London Short Story Festival; The Abroad Writers’ Conference; Los Gatos-Listowel Writers’ Week; the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Festival, Book Passage Corte Madera; San Francisco State University; San Francisco Writers’ Grotto; San Francisco Writers’ Conference; Green Mountain Writers’ Conference; among others. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, Rohan lives in San Francisco where she received her MFA in fiction from Mills College and is a member of San Francisco Writers’ Grotto.”

From the author’s Website 

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