SHORT STORIES

EITHNE FARRY

BARCELONA by Mary Costello (Canongate €14.99, 192pp)

THE characters in Costello’s spare, unflinching second collection of short stories are often confined in cars, train carriages and hotel rooms, and at the mercy of their own constricted thoughts, which veer from the literature to the unknowability of their companions, to the ‘doomed lives of animals’ whose visceral suffering haunts the pages of this book.

These elegant, emotionally complex stories are not comfortable or comforting to read, but they are beautifully, bruisingly honest.

Here, a woman moves in next door to an old lover, neither acknowledging the other or their past relationship (My Little Pyromaniac), while in the marvellously insightful The Choc-Ice Woman, Frances accompanies her brother’s coffin home, contemplating her strained marriage and the heart-breaking secrets contained within it.

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by Rebecca Ivory (Jonathon Cape €15.99, 208pp) WINCINGLY funny and winningly honest, this debut collection delves into the thoughts of self-defeating characters who are well versed in the language of therapy, but are unable to take action on these hard-won insights. They halfheartedly turn up for jobs that they don’t enjoy, frantically fret about the future and have relationships that are emotionally damaging and physically draining.

Take the ‘competitive and collaborative’ friendship, in Push And Pull, of teenage Tara and narrator Sarah, whose unfounded accusations sunder a friendship; or the awkward sexual encounters, in Tiny Wrestler, between frustratingly careless Rory and Diane, who’s keen to articulate her feelings about their disconnection.