"Advise and Sandwiches” - A Short Story by Pat O’Connor - from his collection People in My Brain - 2019 - An Irish Short Story Month Work

 Irish Short Story Month XIII - March to May 2024

"Advise and Sandwiches” - A Short Story by Pat O’Connor - from his collection People in My Brain - 2019 - An Irish Short Story Month XIII Work

Advice and Sandwiches. Short story; First published in Irish Independent November 2011. Available in the Hennessy New Irish Writing Anthology, New Island, c.April 2015.

As the story opens Julia has just left her office for lunch.  She is worried she will be fired soon, her results are good and her clients like her but things just feel wrong to her.  Her boyfriend just told her he has met someone “really exciting” and is moving on.  He seems to expect her to be happy for him.  She feels in strong need of some life directing advise.  Suddenly she sees a just opened sandwich shop sign  that intrigues her.

“A sign over the opening said Advice and Sandwiches, and a placard said Queue here - Advice from €5 - Gourmet Sandwiches free. The queue was the shape of a U, with a rope on little white poles to keep order. A burst of laughter rose from the crowd. It was a good-natured sound. Julie strode past. There was a cheer and clapping. She took a quick, grudging glance. People were saying ‘Aww’ like they were affected by something.”

As Julie waits in line she overhears some advise:

“A male voice called out: ‘I hate my job. What’ll I do?’ ‘Either make it so you like it, or else live cheaper, build up cash, then resign and look for a job you do like. €5. What you want to eat?’ ‘Aah… gimme a ham and cheese and tomato sandwich. No, a sub. A sub, please.’”

Now Julie is at the front of the line.  Somehow she is given just the advise she needs.

The advise given was funny and shrewd, kindly meant.

“‘My wife’s a bitch. What’m I goin’ to do about it?’ This was a cocky voice, his friends egging him on. ‘Go and ask her forgiveness for your own shortcomings. That’s €8. What you wanna eat?’ ‘Hey, I thought it was five euros a sandwich!’ ‘Sandwiches are free – read the signs. Advice starts at five euros and goes up from there. You got the eight euros?’

“‘What’s the best sandwich for someone who loves cats?’ ‘A shared sandwich. That’s €5. What you want?’ ‘Oh? Emm… chicken, some salt, light mayo.’ ‘On plain?’ ‘Plain.’‘Chicken, some salt, 

"Summary Literary Bio

Joint winner of the 2009 Best Start Short Story Competition in Glimmertrain.

Shortlisted for the Sean O’Faolain International Short Story Prize, 2010.

In 2011, shortlisted for the RTE Francis MacManus Award for radio stories, and won the Sean O’Faolain International Short Story Prize.

In 2012 shortlisted for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award and the Fish Short Story prize.

In 2013 was longlisted for Over the Edge New Writer of the Year, and in 2014 for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award.

Radio play This Time it?s Different, was broadcast on 95fm as part of the Limerick City of Culture program, 2014.

In autumn 2014, he was one of eight International Writers in Residence in Tianjin, China.

My story Advice and Sandwiches was included in the 2015 Anthology of Hennessy New Irish Writing, which was published by New Island.

My collection of short stories titled People in My Brain published in November 2019.

Writer in Residence in Split, Croatia for month of November 2022."

From https://patoconnorwriter.com/

“A Mother’s Love” - The Lead Story from In Fields of Butterfly Flames by Steve Wade -2020

 

“A Mother’s Love” - The Lead Story from In Fields of Butterfly Flames   by  Steve Wade -2020

Gateway To Steve Wade on The Reading Life 

Website of Steve Wade 

A Wide Ranging Q and A Session With Steve Wade 

This is the sixth  short story by Steve Wade that has been featured on The Reading Life.  I first read his work during Irish Short Story Month Year Three in March of 2013.  I found his short story “The Land of the Ever Young” fully qualified to stand with the great occult fairy tales of Sheridan Le Fanu or Andrew Lang.

“The Land of the Ever Young" recreates and helps us understand the stories of fairies stealing human children and substituting changelings for them.  Part of the root of these stories comes from the famine years where people had to find ways to deal with the starvation of their children.  On another darker side, this story also  treats of the fact that one more hungry child could be the tipping point in a family on the edge of starvation that can  send everyone else into the grave.  

First and foremost 'The Land of the Ever Young" is a tremendous lot of fun to read.  Joseph Sheridan le Fanu or Andrew L)ang have no better stories than this.  I will tell enough of the plot to give you a feel for it but I want you to read this story without knowing too much about it.  

The other  stories covered show the extent and depth of Wade’s range. (Some of the stories can be read online at links found in my posts)

Today’s story way more than justifies my belief in the immense talent of Steve Wade.

“A Mother’s Love” is the lead story in Wade’s debut collection In Fields of Butterfly Flames and Other Stories.  There are 21 other stories in the collection.  Over the next few months I will be posting on a number of them.  

In “A Mothers Love” you are taken almost dragged into the mind set prevailing in a horrible family seen through the eyes of a wife and mother terribly out of touch with reality, trying to rationalize why her husband prefers sex with his daughter (who seems just entering early adolescence) to her.  She is in thrall to a religious ideology that cripples her thinking.  As I read on in this story you see the real face of evil.  Perhaps you might initially have some sympathy for her but this will not endure.  I will share a bit of Wade’s amazing prose to allow you to experience the dark feel of “A Mother’s Love”:

“Now working hand in hand with the Devil, the two conspired to draw in others for the sake of Mammon. Like swarms of flies they arrived, buzzing through my home, to gorge themselveson her oozing, naked flesh. Each evening, when the last of the swarm left, slaked and bloated, the pair of them unashamedly counted out their filthy lucre on the kitchen table. Theythen celebrated,the only way they knew how, atop the tableamong the pestilence-stricken notes and coins. You would have imagined that even the Devil must sometimes tire of excessive indulgence in fetid fornication.”

From the publisher

About the Author - Steve Wade’s award-winning short fiction has been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies. His work has been broadcast on national and regional radio. He has had stories short-listed for the Francis McManus Short Story Competitionand for the Hennessy Award. His stories have appeared in over fifty print publications, including Crannog, New Fables, and Aesthetica Creative Works Annual. His unpublished novel, On Hikers’ Hill was awarded First Prize in the abook2read.com competition, with Sir Tim Rice as the top judge. He has won First Prize in the Delvin Garradrimna Short Story Competition on a number of occasions. Winner of the Short Story category in the Write by the Sea writing competition 2019. His

short stories have been nominated for the PEN/O’Henry Award, and for the Pushcart Prize.

From the Author’s  introduction 

“The stories in this collection first appeared in anthologies and periodicals. Some of them have won prizes or have been placed in writing competitions. Ostracised by betrayal, isolated through indifference, gutted with guilt, or suffering from loss, the characters in these twenty-two stories are fractured and broken, some irreparably. In their struggle for acceptance, and their desperate search for meaning, they deny the past”

A very worthy edition to the reading list of all lovers of the short story.

Mel u

"In Three Days" by Shauna Gilligan (2013, from The Lakeview International Journal of Literature and the Arts)

March 1 to April 14

Shauna Gilligan

Prior posts about and by Shauna Gilligan

I have posted a lot on the work of Shauna Gilligan.  I would not have done so if I did not greatly admire her work.  She has also kindly guest posted on The Reading Life several times and has answered lots of questions about Irish literature for me.   My main purpose in this post is to let my readers know that her latest story, "In Three Days" was published in the first edition of The Lakeview International Journal of Literature and the Arts (in the interests of full

disclosure, I am on the advisory board).  The journal has already been shortlisted for an international award.  We are proud of our list of authors from all over the world. There are short stories, poems, reviews and interviews as well as some stunning images. (You can read the entire first issue here.)   There is also a premier print edition.   The first edition has stories by writers from all over the world and Ireland is well represented by Gilligan.

"In Three Days" is the story of how two sisters, both unmarried and in their late 30s or early 40s and living with their father as they always have, cope with his death on a  late Monday night.  Their mother died three years ago.  Of course they talk about what they need to do.  Gilligan does a masterful job of letting us see into minds of the sisters, we can see how they are the same in someways, but each different also.  One sister is very practical and begins to make a list of things they need to do.  The other is more vulnerable and nervy.  The story is told in three day by day segments.  We see how the sisters begin to deal mentally with this event.  Their father had been a terminal cancer patient and they nursed him at home.  We learn some interesting things about the sisters lives.  We feel their sadness but also a great weight has been lifted from them.  Anyone who has ever cared for a terminal patient in their home will relate well and see the very strong verisimilitude in this story.   

Author Bio

Born in Dublin, Ireland, Shauna Gilligan has worked and lived in Mexico, Spain, India and the UK. She holds an MA in History from University College Dublin having also studied English as an undergraduate. She is completing a PhD in Writing at the University of Glamorgan, Wales and occasionally lectures in NUI Maynooth in Creative Writing.

As part of her research, she is examining suicide and writing processes in a selection of novels by and in a series of interviews with Irish writer Desmond Hogan.

Her work has been published in The Cobalt Review, The Stinging Fly (online), The First Cut, New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writingand in The Ulster Tatler’s Literary Miscellany. She has given public readings of her fiction in Ireland and USA and has presented on writing at academic conferences in Ireland, UK, Germany and USA.

Her debut novel, Happiness Comes From Nowhere is receiving great reviews from all over the world.

Mel u