Dark Lies the Island
Stories
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4.6 • 7 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
An award-winning collection from the author of City of Bohane, which was hailed by Pete Hamill as "full of marvels" (The New York Times Book Review)
* Short-listed for the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award * Winner of the Sunday Times Short Story Award * One of last year's most critically acclaimed books in the UK * A Guernica Best Book of the Year * A Library Journal "Best Indie Fiction of 2013" *
Dark Lies the Island is a wickedly funny and hugely original collection of stories about misspent love and crimes gone horribly wrong. In the Sunday Times Short Story Award–winning "Beer Trip to Llandudno," a pack of middle-aged ale fanatics seeking the perfect pint find more than they bargained for. A pair of sinister old ladies prowl the countryside for a child to make their own. And a poet looking for inner calm buys an ancient inn on the west coast of Ireland but finds instead rancorous locals and catastrophic floodwaters.
Kevin Barry's dazzling language, razor-sharp ear for the vernacular, and keen eye for the tragedies and comedies of daily life invest these tales with a startling vitality. Dark Lies the Island was short-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and as one of the most acclaimed collections in Europe in many years, it heralds the arrival of a new master of the short story.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
There are a lot of pleasures to be had in Barry's short story collection. First, there's his way with language a bent form of Irish that makes the most mundane exchange, like those of the mileage-obsessed locals at the hotel bar in "Fjord of Killary," somehow hilarious. Then there's the pleasure of safely spending time in the company of people you might well cross the street to avoid, like the Mullaney brothers in "White Hitatchi," who are well-known to the local constabulary, or the law-abiding but big, sweaty, and, as their beer-tasting excursion extends, presumably loud, friends of "Beer Trip to Llandudno." Whether they did well in the high-flying Celtic Tiger years, or, more likely, missed out entirely, whether in Ireland or part of the vast Irish diaspora, Barry's characters tend to be aware of both the exact alcohol content of their chosen beverages and the likelihood that the road they're on isn't leading anywhere good. Though "Dark Lies the Island" one of the few stories told from a female point of view isn't the collection's strongest, it does offer the perfect title overall: the island and its inhabitants aren't doing well, and Barry is a master at showing both the darkness and the piercing moments of humor and self-knowledge that now and then penetrate it.
