In his second collection of stories, The Draughtsman and The Unicorn, Anthony Glavin, more than ever before, demonstrates his command of the short story. Without jumping through hoops, he also shows that the best stories still, as Poe and Chekhov maintained, revolve around revelation of character.
Glavin's stories are not geographically bound: they take place in settings as various as Nicaragua and Donegal, Dublin and Majorca. They are, however, bound by common human pursuits such as health, money and love, as well as the conundrums of happiness and morality.
While all the stories in this collection are well-crafted and memorable, "Transplants," which evolved into Glavin's superb novel, Nighthawk Alley, is particularly memorable. It has to do with the inimitable rogue, Fintan, who quietly brings to bear all the huge questions of humanity on an unassuming workplace.
There is also the superb story, "Health, Money and Love," where the septuagenarian Rodney - militaristic in his mastication routines - grapples with the issues of nationalism, irony, matrimony and friendship. Anglo-Irish, Rodney "had grown up feeling, on various continents, that he didn't quite fit." Though living in Majorca, he dwells on his time in Rhodesia (which his American lodger, Morris, continually reminds him is now Zimbabwe). He laments the lost era of servants and can't understand his third wife's complacency on her return to England. Poor Rodney. Glavin's stories are well-crafted and engaging, at once classical and contemporary.