The Collected Stories

By Clare Boylan

Book Overview

Celebrating twenty years of rare accomplishment, The Collected Stories introduces American readers to a luminous and unforgettable writer of short fiction. The Irish writer Clare Boylan has been publishing compelling and captivating work for over twenty years. Though she is the author of six critically acclaimed novels, she remains one of the most original and exciting short-story writers of our time. Like Alistair MacLeod, Alice Munro, and her compatriot William Trevor, her stories are universal. Hers is an imagination that is able, magically and marvelously, to transform everyday experience into something quite unexpected. As perceptive as Colette, as darkly witty as Dorothy Parker, she waves a flag for the dispossessed and the marginalized and gleefully pulls love from behind its romantic facade. She makes the reader laugh out loud while at the same time compelling an uncomfortable self-examination. Plumbing the inner workings of marriage, aging, family dynamics, and the cost of love, her richly sardonic humor and acutely merciless observations may seem gentle, but look again, for they are edged with razors.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1582432619
• ISBN13: 9781582432618
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Catapult
• Length: 412 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A revelation!

Clare Boylan is quite an interesting author. Her warped, dark and twisted visions of love affairs, motherhood and broken hearts are mirrored in this unique collection of short stories. At times she almost verges on magical realism, for there are some bizarre moments in some of the stories, but I believe she is a genius when she ponders the intricacies and oddities of human relationships. My favorite stories are "Affairs in Order," "My Son the Hero," and "The Stolen Child." Boylan is a true revelation. I recommend this book to those with a penchant for dark and profound stories.