The Dead House by Billy O’Callaghan (2017)

Website of Billy O’Callaghan .

A Very Interesting Wide Ranging Q and A Session With Billy O’Callaghan

From here you will find links to my posts on his short story collections as well as 

One of his short stories I was kindly allowed to publish

I have been following the work of Billy O’Callaghan since March of 2013.  I have featured three of his delighful short story collections.  We also did a very interesting wide ranging Q and A session.  

The Dead House opens in a fashion that evokes centuries of Irish literature, with the narrator announcing in the prologue that he has a long kept story emerged in his consciousness, he hoped he would never feel he must tell the story but now years later he knows he is so obligated.  

I found the novel immensely captivating for the very visual and mesmerising descriptions of the West Coast of Ireland, dramatic cliffs and isolated villages, the character of the narrator, Michael, a successful happy in  his work fine art dealer, his wife after time Alison, their poet friend Liz, and the very intriguing a bit fey painter, Maggie, a long time client of Michael.  The characters are very subtlety developed, O’Callaghan draws us into understanding them.  

For years Michael has sold Maggie’s paintings, he is more than just her art dealer, he is a near father figure and mentor.  We learn Maggie has a history of abusive boyfriends.  We are left wondering what lies below the surface beteeen Maggie and Michael.  A man Maggie loves beats her terribly, putting her in the hospital.  When she finally gets out of the hospital, Michael, Maggie, a poet friend Liz and Alison take a drive along ruggedly beautiful coast, with the spectacular cliffs, country pubs, and small villages.  Maggie falls in love with a broken down old House.  She just has to have it.  Everyone, even the estate agent tries to steer her to a less broken down place.  Michael gives her, maybe we can see it as advance on future sales, a good bit of money to buy it and more to make it livable.  

I really do not want to spoil the wonderfully done super natural elements, very convincing. O’Callaghan gives us a super entertaining and frightening Ouija Board session involving our four central characters.  Through this we are brought into contact with a mysterious and sinister Master and scenes of the horrors of the famine years.  Memory of the real and mythologized past is never to far away and O’Callaghan does a masterful job with this.  Strange and macabre things happen to Maggie, left alone in the house in the hopes she resume her painting.  

I have left out a lot of the exciting plot action.  If you can give yourself over to The Dead House, you will be taken on an exciting journey through West Ireland, the darker side of Irish history, the occult, and relationships.

The Dead House is a powerful and beautiful debut novel which I endorse without reservations to all lovers of the form.

There is a detailed bio of Billie O’Callaghan on his website.

http://billyocallaghan.ie/en/

Mel u

"The Ring" by Byron MacMahon

"The Ring" by Byron MacMahon (1976, 4 pages)

The Irish Quarter

A Celebration of the Irish Short Story

March 11 to ?

Resources and Ideas 

Please consider joining us for The Irish Quarter:  A Celebration of the Irish Short Story,  Year Two, March 12 to July 1.   All you need do is post on one short story by an Irish author and send me a comment or an email and I will include it in the master post at the end of the challenge. 

"The Ring" by Byron MacMahon (1909 to 1998, county Kerry)  was a novelist, playwright and short story writer.  One of his sons was a judge of the Irish High Court.

"The Ring" (I read it in The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories selected by William Trevor) packs nearly a full family history in just a very few pages.   You can feel the emotionally constrained emotion atmosphere of the family in the story which belies great depths of feeling.  

The story is set on a farm in Tipperary.  In this first person story we can reconstruct a lot of hidden history from what the narrator tells us about his grandmother, a very formidable woman.  

As the story opens it is time for the hay to be harvested.  This is a very crucial time on the farm as it brings in a lot of the badly needed cash income.

While she is working on the hay, the grandmother's wedding ring falls  in the haystack and seems lost.   I really appreciated the logic behind her not allowing anyone to help her look for it as she feels only she can do a proper job of looking for it.

When the emotional break through in this story does come it is all the more powerful as the family is so constrained in the emotions and in the way they show their feelings for each other.   This is a good story and I cannot imagine anyone not being glad they read it.

Mel u

"Pastorale" by Patrick Boyle

"Pastorale" by Patrick Boyle (1972, 12 pages)

The Irish Quarter:
A Celebration of the Irish Short Story

March 11 to July 1

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

Please consider joining us for The Irish Quarter.  To Join in you need only do a post on an Irish Short Story (or on a book related to the field such as Frank O'Connor's The Lonely Voice:  A Study of the Short Story) and let me know about it.  Guest posters are very welcome.  If you have any questions, suggestions, or complaints, just leave a comment and I will get back to you soon.  

Patrick Boyle (1905 to 1982) was an Ulsterman, born in Ballymoney.   For many years he worked at the Ulster Bank.  He published three collections of short stories and one novel, Like Any Other Man.  It appears to me none of his work is in print anymore.   There are no other book blog posts on him.  Of the three articles linked to him in his Wikipedia article, two of them are no longer up including one titled "Novelist in Oblivion" so I am guess his work is not read a lot anymore.  I read this story in William Trevor's anthology The Oxford Book of the Irish Short Story.

As I read this story I could not help but think of one of my closest friends, Marty Boyle, who died far to young.  This post is dedicated to him.   He was an American very proud of his Irish heritage.  

There is a distinct version of both English and Irish spoken in Ulster, especially in Donegal where Boyle lived and worked most of his life.   These patterns of speech, showing heavy Scotch influences, is used wonderfully in the dialogue and the third party narration in "Pastorale".  

"Pastorale" is about three brothers, two stayed at home and worked the family farm and were good sons, good church goers and family men.  There other brother had to leave for Australia because of a scandal with a woman.  He was also a heavy drinker and scorned the mass he was brought up to attend.  As we meet them the local priest is there to give the father the last rights.  There is problem, he has never completed a will dividing his property and the two good brothers are afraid their other brother will hear of the father's death (he is pretty well fixed) and come back and claim part of the farm and end up losing it all for everyone through dissipation and womanizing.  They want their father to sign a will on his death bed but the old man is not ready to give up yet.  I will leave rest of the story untold as I hope Boyle will still have a few readers left. I am very glad I read it and would read more of his work.

Mel u

Irish Internet Radio Stations-Great Music for ISSW2

Irish Short Story Week

March 11 to July 1

Radio Stations for the Event

"Ladies, kiss me and
I change into a Prince for the
night"-Ruprect

"The music began 5000
years ago"-Eachna

Some times you need a bit of background music for your reading.  In this post I want to list some of the best available on the Internet radio stations, some in Ireland, that you can listen to on your PC or tablet.   There are also Irish Radio Stations that feature short stories and historical information.  There are a few different sorts of Irish Music stations.  There are your "pub music stations", your Celtic music stations and stations that celebrate the history of Ireland in their music.  "Celtic Music" is kind of a misnomer as we have just about no idea what Celtic music was like, it seems to mean music dominated by the voice, often at a high pitch.  

"May I have
this dance"-Rory

I listen to these stations on my  Ipad through a program called Tunein Radio.  It is a free program (with an upgrade available) that lets you listen to 1000s of radio stations from all over the world.  I think it is a work of genius.  You can search out stations by location, music type etc.   It lists lots of literary pod casts also.   There are other programs of the same sort and programs designed for normal computers but I have only tried Tunein Radio..  

Here are some of the stations I have really enjoyed

Live Ireland from Dublin-plays a very wide variety of Irish Music

All Irish Radio-lots of country type music-The Hill Billy Hellcats are on now!

Irish Pub Music-goes out to thousands of Irish Pubs from Chicago to Cape Town to Mexico City and Manila-a  wonderful song is being played now by The Roadsiders "The Shores of  Amerikay"-much of the history of the Irish Diaspora is in this song.  

RTE 2fm 90.7 Dublin-lots of good stuff on this channel

WBGM-in Boston-very traditional-I listened to a great one hour program on this station on Irish Soldiers in The St Patricks Brigade in the Mexican Army-the kind of thing you do not learn in school.-Very much a heritage station

Irish Country Music-from Limerick-I love this station-I like to sit on my veranda early in the morning, drink ice  green tea and read old Irish short stories.  The roots of American country music is in Ireland and Scotland.  There is a lot of pain in the songs on this station.

There are lots more but this will get you started.  Of course you can listen to Irish radio stations of the same types you will find anywhere but these are special stations.   

Please let us know what your background music is for reading Irish Short Stories.  Do you listen to music on your PC or tablet?   Do you use a program other than the one I mentioned?

At Last a post that is not totally boring-
Carmella

"Della" by Anne Enright

"Della" by Ann Enright (2005, 3 pages)

Irish Short Story Week Year Two

March 11 to May 1

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

My Prior Posts for ISSW Year Two

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week, now set to end May 1 (yes long week).  There are lots of links to stories you can read for the event on my resources page.   All you are asked to do is to post on at least one Irish Short Story and let me know about it.  I am very open to guest posters and joint mini-events.   If you have any questions or suggestions,  please leave a comment or email me.      

During Irish Short Story Week last year I posted on two short stories by Anne Enright, "Natalie" and "The Bed Department".   I enjoyed both of these stories a lot and I am glad that The New Yorker has placed these two stories as well as "Della" in the free area of their archives.   I will just do a very brief post on "Della" as my main purpose here is to be sure people know you can read contemporary top name Irish Short Stories for free.  

Anne Enright (1968-Dublin) won the Booker Prize in 2007 for The Gathering.   Enright graduated from Trinity College in Dublin following in the footsteps of Jonathan Swift,  Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde and Samuel Becket.  Enright worked in television as a producer of children's programs before devoting her full time to writing in 1993.  She is married and has two children.

"Della" is a very well done and is well worth the few minutes time it will take you to read it.   It is about a lonely old woman and an even more lonely old man who lives in the apartment next to her.   Both live by themselves and are really past the age where it is safe to live alone.

As the story opens Della is awaking from a dream about naked boys swimming besides a stream.   I will quote a bit so you can assure your self of the excellence of the prose of Enright.

"Now this is a good story"-
Carmella

The man next door was going blind, but he didn’t seem to notice it. Della felt obliged to point it out to him, even though it was none of her business and she didn’t really know what to say. They had lived side by side for more than fifty years, but they never got on much. Della had liked his wife, but she was dead a long time now, and he had never been chatty. Besides, his manner with children had stung Della when she was rearing her own. Her five and his two, all gone.At least hers came back now and again—his didn’t darken the door—but they were scattered, and Della, left to herself for long stretches of time, was prone to forgetfulness and thoughts about birch trees and naked boys she had never known. Sometimes, from next door came a scratching or tapping, which made her think, What could he be up to in there? Other times, so much silence that she wrote it down: “16th October—no noise,” trying to keep track of things, in case the man died. Despite the fact that she couldn’t remember what year it was.

The man next door seems to be her only human contact.   She listens to the sounds she makes and wonders what he could be doing.   If she hears no sounds for long periods of time she wonders if she should try to get in touch with the children of the man, if she even can.   The man may be healthier than the woman thinks.   The story is a straight out of the Frank O'Connor play book short story, you introduce some lonely people with no voice in society, let us get to know them, then something dramatic happens from which the main character in the story learns something.  

"Lots of time to join us"
Rory

Mel u

"The Poteen Maker" by Michael McLaverty

"The Poteen Maker" by Michael McLaverty  (1978, six pages)

Irish Short Story Week Year Two

March 11 to May 1

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week Year Two, now  set to run until May 1.   To participate all you need do is to post on one Irish Short story or a related matter and let me know about it.   You are also welcome to guest post.   You need not follow my schedule at all.  I am updating all posts by participants periodically and at the end of the event I will do a master post spotlighting the blogs or writings of each participant and it will have a permanent place on the fixed pages below my header picture.

I think I have yet to post on a work by a writer from Northern Ireland  but with Michael McLaverty I am moving to fix that hole.  McLaverty (1904 to 1992) was born in County Monaghan and then moved as a child to Belfast where he spent the bulk of his life.  He was a teacher and a principal in addition to writing two novels and a number of short stories about life in Northern Ireland.

"The Poteen Maker" is told in the first person by a man recalling an old teacher of his,  (I confess I did not know that poteen is high potency alcoholic drink made from the first distillation of fermented mash in the process of whiskey making.  All whiskey had to be taxed by the government and poteen was home made and untaxed).  Making poteen was declared illegal in 1691 but that never stopped anyone.   I have never experienced this but my guess is it packs a real kick and produces a mean hangover and is probably not real smooth.  Brewing it was kind of a way an ordinary citizen could try to assert his independence from the British.   

It is interesting to learn from the story what when on inside a small school with one room and one teacher.   One day the boys come a bit early and they see the teacher boiling some brown liquid in a bunsen burner.   The teacher says he is preparing for the class a demonstration of how to purify dirty water so the boys will know how to do this one day.  Then of all the luck the district school inspector walks into the school and "what is going on".  With a wink and without the boys ever the wiser the two men share the first shots of the poteen,

"The Poteen Maker" is very enjoyable story.  I would happily read more of his work.  I read this story in William Trevor's Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories.  

"No thanks, Mel promised  me all the Jameson
I can drink"-Carmilla

"Carmilla, have some poteen, one glass
can't hurt"-Rory

The Ulster County historical society has a very informative article on McLaverty.

Mel u

Elizabeth Reapy- "Moving Statues"

"Moving Statues" (2011, 4 pages)

Irish Short Story Week Year Two

Elizabeth Reapy

March 12 to April 11

Emerging Women Writers

March 23 to March 29


Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

Irish Short Story Week is now officially turned into a month long event,  between March 12 and April 11.  I will do an update on the event so far soon in which I will list all of the new posts and set out my plans for the remainder of the event. (if I miss yours it is an oversight so please tell me and I will fix it right away).   Everyone is invited to join us.   All you are asked to do is post on one Irish short story and let me know of  your post.   There have already been two guest posts so far and you are more than welcome to do one on The Reading Life.  If you are interested in doing this you can simply email me your content and I will post it with all due credit and links to you, of course.   You do not at all have to follow my schedule.   At the end of the challenge I will do, as I did in 2011, a master post on all of the great participants.


I have already posted on a very moving story by Kate Ferguson, "Mouse" which reminded me a lot of an early Katherine Mansfield story and a story that kind of takes Chekhov to another level, "Vronsky's Teeth" by Sheila Miller.  (My reasons for focusing on Emerging Irish Women Writers are here.)


I decided to post on Elizabeth Reapy (her official bio will be included) because I liked her "Moving Statues"  a great deal,it is  very different from the first two stories I read for this segment of Irish Short Stories Week Year Two and to make sure my readers know about the online journal that she cofounded and of which she is now editor, Wordlegs.  


"Moving Statues" is about a young woman seemingly in her late teens or early twenties.  Reapy's prose is very lean with a bit of a refreshing hard edge to it.   You can see the flavor of her excellent prose in the opening few sentences of the story

I’m not sure about miracles. Or God. If there was such things then why did my Dad and my brother Matthew get killed. Four years ago in 1981. Out fishing and a wave turned them over. Both good swimmers. Both drowned. And my Mam, well, she’s been drowning ever since. And we’re all getting drowned this summer. I think there has been about three days that didn’t rain since I got my school holidays from the Convent. The only decent thing this summer has been Live Aid. And Micháel McHugh from McHughs’ Shop in the village.

One day the daughter hears that a statue of Mary has moved on its own power.  The daughter hopes this might be the news that will get her mother to break out of her terrible downward cycle.  At first the mother is not interested in this just like she is not interested anything else.  

I found the passages in which Reapy shows us the mother and daughter talking about whether or not they would go see the statue very powerful and moving so I will quote it a bit.

"Rory, you are needed over on
Fairy Week"-Carmilla

"Carmilla, Vampire Day is soon"-Rory

When I was walking home, my legs were wobbly. I rushed in to Mammy’s bedroom and told her all the news. I added a small few details of my own about what bishops had said about it and how RTÉ were there along with the Cork newspapers. She just said she was tired.The next day, the moving statue did actually get discussed on RTÉ. I had to get Mam to agree to go. She wouldn’t let me go alone, she hated me being gone from the house. I made her tea and put it, along with the Custard Creams, on a tray and went down to her.“Mammy, we should go to see the statue.”“No, Angela. To be honest I’ve no interest.”“But it’s on in here, above in Ballinspittle. It’s only a fifteen-minute drive. We should just go to see it.”“I don’t care about it,” she said and turned her body away from me.I started crying and shouted at her. “You don’t care about anything. You don’t even care about me. If you did, you’d be looking after me and not the other way round.”She moved her head to face me. “Don’t be like that, Angela. I can’t take much of that

I wll leave the rest of the story untold but Reapy has really put a lot of narrative strength in this story.   She gives enough detail to make the people seem very real and the conversations between mother and daughter are perfect.   The daughter is not just a saint, she has her frustrations, gets very bored and even has a crush.


Wordlegs is an online publication which focuses mostly work by emerging Irish Writers including short stories, reviews, poetry and flash fiction.  It comes out four times a year and I will be following it now.  

"Moving Statues" can be read here.



Here is the official biography of Elizabeth Reapy (who writes as EM  Reapy)


EM Reapy was born in Ireland in 1984. She has a BA in English literature and history (NUIG) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education (UCC). In 2009, she graduated from the MA in Creative Writing programme at the Seamus Heaney Centre in Queen’s University, Belfast. That same year she was shortlisted for Over the Edge New Writer of the Year award. Her short fiction and poetry has been featured in various Irish, British and American publications. In 2010, she co-founded and is current editor of wordlegs.com; an online literary journal that showcases young and emerging Irish talent. wordlegs was nominated for an Irish Web Award and pieces from it were translated into Spanish for Cuadrivo magazine. She was selected to read at the Lonely Voice Introduction Series in the Irish Writers Centre in May 2010 and to attend Fiction Masterclasses in Trinity College Dublin in early 2011. In May 2011, she was awarded the Tyrone Guthrie Centre Regional Bursary by Mayo Arts Council. Her short film ‘Lunching,’ is being produced by Barley Films animation studio, with another animated short in review. She is redrafting a feature length screenplay and hopes to release a collection of short stories in 2013.

In the next two days I plan to post on stories by Shauna Gilligan and Ethel Rohan.   I am seeking suggestions for other writers to cover and am open to posting on more than seven emerging women writers.

Mel u

"Dreamin' Dreams" by Eddie Stack

"Dreamin Dreams" by Eddie Stack (2011, 16 pages)

Irish Short Story Week Year II

March 12 to March 31

Drinking Stories Day

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week Year Two, March 12 to March 31.   All you need do is post on one short story by an Irish author and send me a comment or an email and I will include it in the master post at the end of the challenge. 

"Dreamin' Dreams" by Eddie Stack (County Clare Ireland, living in USA since 1986) is about blue collar Irish Immigrants living in San Francisco.   The people in this story are not web designers and they do not own a boutique that imports antique art from Tibet.    I suspect they do not march in Pride parades or live in lovingly restored  19th century town houses.   They  can afford imported Irish beer only on paydays, if they are lucky enough to have a job.  

A quick Google search found that Ireland is second, behind the Czech Republic in beer consumption, coming in at 131.2 liters or 35 gallons of beer person per person.    If you remove nondrinkers, the underage and such form the factors the amount consumer per actual drinker must go way up.   This explains all of the drinking stories to be found by Irish Writers.   

One very popular Irish drinking story is "A Beer Run to LLandundno" by Kevin Barry is about a group of mates who bar hop so they can quality tastes lots of different kind of beers and rate them. (Caroline of Beauty is a Sleeping Cat  has done a very good post on this story).   They have wives or girl friends, kids, jobs, but their real pleasure in life seems to be hanging out with their buddies drinking beer.  They have decent houses, cars, etc.    For sure they are all in the 131 liter + club.   Maybe they never noticed them but over in a dark corner of one the cheapest to drink in pubs, there are a few men in a dark corner,  drinking alone.  Our beer buddies know enough not to disturb these  kind of dangerous looking men.   It is these people that "Dreamin' Dreams" is about.


Our lead character, MJ, has just celebrated his 13th year in America and was just laid off from his construction job.  This paragraph pretty much tells his story.

"MJ is fifty something, a small stock bachelor with blue eyes and a red porter face.  America had not made much of an impression on him, fortune-wise or other and he is the same today as he day he left Ballysollock.   Years of work trying to get somewhere and now he realizes there is nowhere to go to.   Digging, digging, digging.  Day and night.  Seven days a week, digging through life in the hope of going back to Ireland with a bundle of money.   Now there is no digging and no money.  Just time;  years of it fell into his lap and he wasn't ready for it".

MJ is not used to having free time and does not know what to do with himself.   He walks the streets saying hello to other Irish immigrants.  He has one mate, Red Carty from Galway, who has not worked for years and lives from Social Security.  Red "sleeps late and drinks early".  All of their conversations are about the good old days back in Ireland.   Everyday is the same for MJ, drinking a couple of pints with Red, all he can afford, going back to his two room flat, fixing a meal of beans, bread, eggs, and potatoes and  falling asleep watching wrestling.  


Nothing much happens in the story once MJ loses his job and it does not look like a lot is going to happen but more of the same.  


You can read this story for free by downloading a sample of Out of the Blue from Amazon.   There are two stories in the collection and Stack has another Kindle book for sale on Amazon with two stories in the sample edition.   You can read four of his short stories for free on his webpage.


Stack has won numerous awards for his fiction, has published four works of fiction.   In 2010, he integrated spoken word and printed work with art, music and song to produce an iPhone app of The West; this was the first iPhone app of Irish fiction.


To me if a writer lists for reading several of her or his short stories on their webpage, it is a mark of self-confidence.   


"Dreamin' Dreams" is a very enjoyable to read story that seems very true to life.  


Mel u

"The News from Dublin" by Colm Toibin

"The News from Dublin" by Colm Toibin (2010, 28 pages)

21th Century Stories

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

Toibin Speaks out on Immigration, the Catholic Church, and other issues

at the Sydney Writers Festival

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week Year Two, March 12 to March 31.   All you need do is post on one short story by an Irish author and send me a comment or and e mail and I will include it in the master post at the end of the challenge.  

Colm Toibin (1955, County Wexford, Ireland) is the author of several award winning novels, (I have previously posted on his novel based on the London years of Henry James, The Master)  essays and short stories.   He was the Leonard Milberg Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton before becoming the Mellon Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia.   He is the author of two highly praised collections of short stories,  Mothers and Sons and The Empty Family.   

"News From Dublin"  is one of the stories included in New Irish Short Stories by Colm Toibin, published in 2010.  "News From Dublin" is centered on a family, three brothers, one of them quite successful, one struggling along and one dying of TB.   There father is active in politics.   They have heard of a medical trial being done of a new drug that may safe their brother but it has not yet been approved by the Ministry of Health for general usage.   The brothers know that a political associate of their father is in fact the head of the public health department so they go to him to see if  he can tell them how to get the drug for their brother.   I will leave the story unspoiled.

"News From Dublin" is about family with deep emotional ties in an emotionally restrained culture. It is also about politics.  The level of the prose is very high.   The story is not at all hard to follow.  I hope to read more of the short stories of Toibin one day.

Please share your experiences with Toibin with us.

"Welcome to Irish Short Stories Week"     -
Carmella

Mel u