GREAT SHORTS FIND A FINE HOME

Sweet Home Wendy Erskine The Stinging Fly Press €12.99

The Irish short story is in fine health and further proof of this is provided by Sweet Home, a witty and beautifully drawn debut collection that captures the voice of Belfast, as the city struggles to embrace the new century. A Belfast native, Wendy Erskine’s strength is in the dialogue and her ability to create rounded studies of characters coming to terms with issues around immigration, emigration, liberalisation, wealth and class. In To All Their Dues a griefstricken gangster struggles to identify his enemies as sectarian divisions fade and new communities emerge. Inakeen, a story about an elderly woman who becomes obsessed with her Somali immigrant neighbours, is an examination of about loneliness that builds to wonderfully naïve denouement. In Arab States: Mind and Narrative, the standout short, a middle-aged woman tries to revisit her youth by pursuing an old college friend whose advances she turned down in favour of her husband. In a recent interview, Erskine said she wanted to avoid clichés in her work. She has certainly achieved that, and has perhaps pioneered a new path for stories from the North. Sweet Home is all the more brilliant for that.