The stories in Marilyn McLaughlin's first collection, A Dream Woke Me, are mostly rooted in the everyday. Built around a brief encounter or a simple detail - the sighting of a fox at dawn, a family picnic, the planting of a honeysuckle - McLaughlin's stories are handled with such deftness and delicacy that each becomes a complete, tiny world. Many are set on the wild coasts of the north-west; indeed, they share something of that landscape's mythic quality, its elemental strangeness. Yet there is also a very human side to McLaughlin's story-telling; she is as sensitive to the nuances of emotions and relationships as she is to the beauty of the natural world - in "Threads ", a mother comes to grips with her son's announcement of his impending emigration while in "Ghosts " a dead mother watches protectively over her children.
These are indeed short stories - most of the 14 are under 10 pages - and part of the pleasure of the collection is being able to pick it up and dip into McLaughlin's perfectly measured prose with such ease. It will be interesting to see how she might develop these vignettes into something more substantial in the future, but for the moment they provide satisfying glimpses of a fresh talent.
Catherine Heaney is books editor of Image magazine. Louise East is an Irish Times columnist.