New Dubliners
Edited by Oona Frawley
Commissioned to commemorate 100 years of James Joyce's own famous collection about Ireland's bustling capital, this collection presents stories from a number of current prominent writers, all about different experiences of Dublin. Like most short story collections, the quality in New Dubliners can get a bit dodgy, with several of its stories simply meandering along without much consideration for plot or, indeed, for making sense. These stories, and the characters within them, wander without purpose and fail to make many poignant observations, let alone entertain. There are, however, a few excellent stories in this slim volume, and perhaps it isn't a coincidence that they tend toward humor. "As If There Were Trees," by Colum McCann, is an exception to this suggested rule, looking head-on at the ethnic diversity in an economically disadvantaged area in a powerful, quick story. Other excellent pieces use humor, or the appearance thereof, to mask and even illuminate darker themes. Ivy Bannister's "Mrs. Hyde Frolics in the Eel Pit" displays, as its title may suggest, a solidly ironic tone, and the audience's mirth at deducing what poor Mrs. Hyde must fail to realize masks the inherent tragedy, as her house of cards is surely soon to topple.
There is a different, sad kind of irony in Bernard MacLaverty's "The Assessment," which brilliantly uses narration to convey the self-assuredness, and latent anxieties, of those with Alzheimer's. Repeated phrases may seem humorous, but in the end, as the reader understands the cause of the repetition, it turns out that MacLaverty is writing not a joke but a brilliantly, painfully resonant story about loss. Other stories are competent, neither particularly revelatory nor agonizingly aimless: Maeve Binchy's "All That Matters" is a amusing, if trite (just as, incidentally, one of her main characters is), and "Martha's Streets," by Dermot Bolger, provides the almost obligatory direct Joyce tribute, though it stands too as a testament to the power of literature. Then, too, there is the purely joyful "Benny Gets the Blame," by Clare Boylan, an amusingly narrated story of childhood shenanigans. New Dubliners does not touch on a wide array of facets of Dublin life, but it is a competent collection; its slow stories go quickly enough and the gems are indeed worth finding.
Grade: B+
Edited by Oona Frawley
Commissioned to commemorate 100 years of James Joyce's own famous collection about Ireland's bustling capital, this collection presents stories from a number of current prominent writers, all about different experiences of Dublin. Like most short story collections, the quality in New Dubliners can get a bit dodgy, with several of its stories simply meandering along without much consideration for plot or, indeed, for making sense. These stories, and the characters within them, wander without purpose and fail to make many poignant observations, let alone entertain. There are, however, a few excellent stories in this slim volume, and perhaps it isn't a coincidence that they tend toward humor. "As If There Were Trees," by Colum McCann, is an exception to this suggested rule, looking head-on at the ethnic diversity in an economically disadvantaged area in a powerful, quick story. Other excellent pieces use humor, or the appearance thereof, to mask and even illuminate darker themes. Ivy Bannister's "Mrs. Hyde Frolics in the Eel Pit" displays, as its title may suggest, a solidly ironic tone, and the audience's mirth at deducing what poor Mrs. Hyde must fail to realize masks the inherent tragedy, as her house of cards is surely soon to topple.
There is a different, sad kind of irony in Bernard MacLaverty's "The Assessment," which brilliantly uses narration to convey the self-assuredness, and latent anxieties, of those with Alzheimer's. Repeated phrases may seem humorous, but in the end, as the reader understands the cause of the repetition, it turns out that MacLaverty is writing not a joke but a brilliantly, painfully resonant story about loss. Other stories are competent, neither particularly revelatory nor agonizingly aimless: Maeve Binchy's "All That Matters" is a amusing, if trite (just as, incidentally, one of her main characters is), and "Martha's Streets," by Dermot Bolger, provides the almost obligatory direct Joyce tribute, though it stands too as a testament to the power of literature. Then, too, there is the purely joyful "Benny Gets the Blame," by Clare Boylan, an amusingly narrated story of childhood shenanigans. New Dubliners does not touch on a wide array of facets of Dublin life, but it is a competent collection; its slow stories go quickly enough and the gems are indeed worth finding.
Grade: B+
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