Scéalta: Short Stories by Irish Women Edited by Rebecca O'Connor Telegram, 174pp. £8.99
This collection of short stories from independent publisher Telegram is part of a series devoted to the work of women writers from around the world, which already lists volumes from locations such as Lebanon, Palestine and Pakistan. Perhaps the intention is eventually to cover all literate regions of the globe, but as it stands modern Irish women seem disingenuously positioned here alongside their sisters from Iran and Bangladesh, as though staking a belated claim on the pressures of fundamentalism and under-development. The sense of time-lag is heightened by author-editor Rebecca O'Connor's folksy introduction, hailing our fireside traditions and "gift of the gab" - surely by now the Irish short story has slipped such ancient moorings?
If it has, then its modern promise shows through in a few of the more polished stories included here, and particularly those contributed by established longer-form authors. Anne Haverty's claustrophobic Fusion is a clever updating of a Bowenesque uncanny, and Christine Dwyer Hickey's Esther's House puts a fresh tangent on a portrait of a disjointed Dublin family. Among these more accomplished works, Molly McCloskey's Here, Now, first published in the Dublin Review, stands out: a series of painterly vignettes drawn on the Sligo landscape and anatomising the progress of a love affair, it comprises one of the few pieces in the collection to take real liberties with the short story form.
These are stories that satisfy because they take time and space to develop, but in contrast several contributions seem over-economic and uncertain with narrative. Critics eulogise the short story for its dealings with the "evanescent", but at what point does the evanescent become vapid, the intangible become intractable? Vona Groarke's Cubs, in structural terms a perfect arc of a tale, is beautifully composed but slight to the point of anorexia; evanescent, certainly, but desperate for a bit more narrative meat.
Other less achieved pieces likewise fail to cover enough ground in enough depth, as if hamstrung by the idea that to suggest a story is more sophisticated - more "evanescent" - than simply telling one. The American writer, Annie Proulx, frequently observed that her weakness was trying to cram too much into her stories; a bit more of such "cramming" here might have fleshed out some of these skeletal outlines.
This is a well-intentioned collation but an uneven one, and the editor's anachronistic introductory spin on the national art form spreads into her selection of material. There is a missed opportunity in the fact that so many of the 15 pieces are of a bygone Ireland; of the farmsteads, kitchens, shopping trips to Switzers and gin-soaked baths. Clare Keegan's Men and Women, originally published in her 1999 Antarctica collection, is a reminder of her extraordinary control and emotional subtlety as a writer, but it characterises a collection too firmly embedded in a Trevor-ish topography of dancehalls and disappointment. Only Judith Mok's Pirates, with its unexpected view of an Iranian immigrant struggling to maintain connections with his Irish daughter, gives a sense of a social profile that has moved beyond the 1970s.
Packaged like this, the Irish short story seems insecure and outmoded, unable to escape the time-warp of the volume's introduction. Obviously, this is just not representative of how the genre has evolved in recent years, and the editor could well have ventured further into developments in form and content. What the collection might say about contemporary Irish women, meanwhile, remains "evanescent", unless readers can determine some meaning in its curious cover photo of a young woman, tattooed with a large shamrock, and brazenly smoking a cigarette inside what appears to be a public building.
Eve Patten lectures in the school of English, Trinity College Dublin
Stories
Eve Patten