NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

Happy New Year, my dears! I hope 2011 is a creative & successful one for all of you.

We are talking New Year's Resolutions at the Anti-Room today. Mine are the same as usual! More here.

HORIZON CONTRIBUTORS BOOKS OF THE YEAR

As I said before, I've contributed to a few Books of the Year round-ups this year. Here 's the final one. Katy Evans-Bush asked all us Horizoners to contribute our picks to Horizon. Mine and others are up on the Salt blog ahead of the publication of the review here.

DAVID MITCHELL - THE ART OF FICTION

Wonderfully talented writer David Mitchell is interviewed in the Art of Fiction series in The Paris Review. A couple of tiny but fascinating extracts:

INTERVIEWER:

Do you have any form of ritual preparation before writing?

DAVID MITCHELL:

Absolutely not. I can write pretty much anywhere. If I’m in a loud place where I know the language, then I can’t write, but generally the universe needs to contrive circumstances to stop me writing, rather than contrive ones to allow me to write. But I am happiest in my hut in County Cork, with a pot of green tea and a large, uncluttered table.

INTERVIEWER

Some writers talk about getting into a zone, where things come in a rush. 

DAVID MITCHELL

Writers can sound rather mystical when they talk about these things. Words like inspiration and creativity I’m really rather suspicious of, though I can’t talk about my work for more than thirty seconds without deploying them myself. Sometimes I think that creativity is a matter of seeing, or stumbling over, unobvious similarities between things—like composing a fresh metaphor, but on a more complex scale. One night in Hiroshima it occurred to me that the moon behind a certain cloud formation looked very like a painkiller dissolving in a glass of water. I didn’t work toward that simile, it was simply there: I was mugged, as it were, by the similarity between these two very different things. Literary composition can be a similar process. The writer’s real world and the writer’s fictional world are compared, and these comparisons turned into text. But other times literary composition can be a plain old slog, and nothing to do with zones or inspiration. It’s world making and the peopling of those worlds, complete with time lines and heartache.

SHORT STORIES ARE LIKE JESUS

I meant to say Happy Christmas to you all yesterday but...the freezing weather and no heat/no water situation here at home had me stressed out to my ears, so I didn't get around to it. We still have no heat or water but at least Christmas Day is upon us, Santa arrived safely and we have a fire on, so all is well. And we lasted until 5.30am before getting up, which is not bad.

Anyhoo, dear blog readers, thank you for reading in 2010 - a quieter year for blogging all round - and for your cheerful support of me and my writing. I love that you all tune in.

I woke the other night thinking about short story analogies - Ailsa Cox has been collecting these on her blog here. I came up with a seasonal one. Ahem:

Short stories are like Jesus: they enter the world with a bang; do something extraordinary early on; then move convincingly, and with purpose, to their inevitable ending. Ta dah!

Nollaig shona, all!

CHRISTMAS AT THE ANTI-ROOM

We're talking about Christmases past and present at The Anti-Room today. There's some lovely stuff there.

SOUTHWORD 19 ONLINE

Photo by John Minihan

Southword 19 is now online and the winners of the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Award, as chosen by Tania Hershman, can be read there. There are new poems from the brilliant Tess Gallagher, Vona Groarke and Billy Collins; Matthew Sweeney reviews Thomas Lynch; Jennifer Matthews reviews Dave Lordan; Gerry Murphy is also in review etc. etc.

John Minihan is the Frank O'Connor festival's official photographer each year and there are photos aplenty form this year's events in Southword. The pic above is of me and a terrified looking Juno, with Finbar, my husband. What a privilege to be photographed by John again. Get yourself to the festival next year - it's in my top two, vying for pole position with Cúirt.

REVIEW - JANE EYRE @THE GATE

I've reviewed the production of Jane Eyre at The Gate Theatre, Dublin, over at The Anti-Room here.

MY CHOICE OF 2010 NOVELS

I hope you've all had an enjoyable reading year in 2010. It's been an outstanding year for fiction, I think.

I’ve already contributed to three Books of 2010 features, in The Irish Times, on Horizon (forthcoming) and at The Anti-Room, so I don’t want to repeat myself here. I’m back reading novels with great gusto because I’m writing another one, so I want to recommend two novels I’ve read very recently, both of which came out this year.

Rachel Trezise – Sixteen Shades of Crazy (Blue Door, 2010)

The first is Welsh writer Rachel Trezise’s Sixteen Shades of Crazy. You might know Rachel’s writing from her superb short fiction collection, Fresh Apples for which she deservedly won the £60,000 Dylan Thomas Prize in 2006. Sixteen Shades of Crazy mines similar territory to Fresh Apples: ordinary people in the Welsh Valleys trying to negotiate relationships, family, drug-taking, lack of money and lack of prospects. The book centres on Ellie, a bright, thoughtful young woman who wants more than her ‘went out, got pissed; same shit, different day’ life. Ellie is stuck in all kinds of ruts and her friends are hopeless: bitchy and pathologically selfish hairdresser Rhiannon is funny and nasty. Super Mom Sian is withering away to nothing, inside and out, and nobody notices. Boyfriend Andy, a nice guy, offers Ellie a boring life in the village when she dreams of New York. Then, in walks drug dealer Johnny and he messes up all of their lives.

The chapters switch between the POV of the characters which keeps the pace going and we get to see what’s really going on from everyone’s angle. Basically, the new chief of police has declared war on drugs in Aberalaw but Johnny’s timely arrival to the village means there are drugs available, but at a price, especially for the women.

Sometimes seedy, sometimes hilarious, this is great modern fiction. There is hopelessness, pointless sex, lots of drink and drugs, and a palpable boredom with life. The characters are well drawn especially the lunatic, unpredictable Rhiannon. The book is both tragic and funny and proves Rachel Trezise to be the stunning writer she is.

Martin Malone – The Only Glow of the Day (New Island, 2010)

The other novel I read recently and really enjoyed is Martin Malone’s The Only Glow of the Day which is about the Curragh Wrens – the women who lived as prostitutes and common-law-wives to the soldiers in the Curragh Camp in County Kildare. Martin brought out a short story collection last year, The Mango War, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and he has also written other novels and a non-fiction book about his experiences as a soldier. 

Again the story is told from several points of view, but the main character is Rosanna Doyle, who foolishly believes that a soldier called Johnny wants to marry her. She arrives to the Curragh, expecting his baby, thinking he’ll be thrilled. Needless to say, Johnny can’t be found and Rosanna ends up in a wren’s nest – that is, a hollowed-out furze bush – with a rough band of prostitutes. She makes friends with the women but each woman must look after herself and it’s not long before Rosanna follows their lead to earn money.

The story is a sad one and the novel’s atmosphere is bleak and dark – there is endless rain and disease but all this contributes to recreating the harsh reality of the women’s lives. There are a couple of parallel stories: we follow the work of Richard Tone who has been sent by Charles Dickens to report on the women’s situation; we also see the kindness and greed of James Greaney one of the rangers employed to police the plains. So-called do-gooders – the church and the workhouse – are exposed for their cruelty, which adds a contemporary twist to the story.

The language is beautiful – Martin Malone is gifted at fashioning beautiful imagery and the prose in this book zings with life. Some of his turns of phrase aroused my professional jealousy, I must admit. The story speeds up towards the end with many of the main characters taking decisions that will alter their lives forever and there are some neat twists and surprises that prove satisfying. All in all, a harsh story, beautifully told that will prove rewarding for the lover of quality literary fiction.

THE ANTI-ROOM - BOOKS WE LIKED IN 2010

We did our Books We Liked in 2010 post on the Anti-Room. Mine included Patrick Chapman's The Darwin Vampires and Tom Vowler's The Method. Go see what we liked here.

STROKESTOWN - EARLIER ENTRY DAY

STROKESTOWN PARK HOUSE

Strokestown poetry competitions have an earlier entry date this year; entries should be emailed or posted by Monday 24 January 2011.

Poems can be posted, along with an entry form which you can print off from the website here.

Or you can submit and pay for them online here.

Prizes total 7,000 euros, and shortlisted poets are invited to read a selection of their work at Strokestown International Poetry Festival (on the May Bank Holiday weekend) for which they will be paid a reading fee of 400 euros. All other information, including the competition rules and who the judges are, are on the web site.

The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story - review

The nice people at Granta sent me a copy of The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story because they 'thought I'd like it'. I do like it - thank you, Granta! So I thought I should repay them by reviewing it here. So here goes:

Will I do the clichéd reviewing-an-anthology thing and lament the excluded writers? Wail about the story that should have represented X writer? Moan about the fact that anthologies usually represent who the writer is friends with/connected to, rather than who is actually writing and publishing short stories at the time? No, I won’t bother. This is very much Anne Enright’s personal selection. She read hundreds of stories for this book – I have no doubt that she took her task seriously and, here, she presents the stories that stayed with her, long after reading them. Her foreword is cryptic in the way only Anne Enright can be cryptic. She appears to say that the English are not great short fiction writers – or does she? She is also provocative in that she takes issue with Frank O’Connor’s assertion that the short story is about the lonely and ‘submerged populations’.

I’m a huge Enright fan and I enjoyed reading her introduction to the book, even if I didn’t fully get all of it. She has, as always, interesting things to say. Consider, for example her assertion that ‘if the short story is a national form it did not seem to flourish in the national language of Irish, where all the excitement, for me at least, was in poetry.’ Agh – what about Liam Ó Flatharta’s Dúil? Or Peig which was essentially a collection of stories? (Or am I unique in that I enjoyed Peig?!)

But I love what she says about John McGahern’s stories: ‘[they] are the literary equivalent of a hand grenade rolled across the kitchen floor.’ Brilliant.

My heart fell to my boots when the opening story by Michael McLaverty was about nuns. Groan. Ireland is not all about religion and alcohol – really! Anyway, I read the story. It broke a few ‘rules’ of writing, for example, it shifted viewpoint throughout and it was overloaded with characters. But, do you know what? I enjoyed it. It zones in on the claustrophobia and pettiness that always seems to surround convent life; it highlights the childish nature of many nuns; it focuses on one event, which is what any good short story should do. The story ends predictably, but so what? Sometimes there is comfort in that.

There's a nasty little story from Roddy Doyle and a not very convincing one from John Banville but all in all there's a tempting selection in the anthology. I like that Maeve Brennan is included and Mary Lavin, but I would have loved more modern stories.

I wonder if this book was rushed out in the end – the copyediting and proofreading is poor. Claire Keegan’s name is spelt wrong twice and there are odd gaps left around the ellipsis here, there and everywhere. It’s enough to drive a reader mad! And for anyone who thinks I’m nitpicking – perfection in presentation is crucial (ask Noah Lukeman). I would have thought that Granta would be top-notch when it came to such issues.

There is a sense of the usual suspects about this book – only one name was not familiar to me: Jennifer Cornell. Wouldn’t it be lovely to open an anthology and be introduced to heaps of lesser known writers? None of the writers represented here is under 40 years of age either. That, I think, is unfortunate and an oversight. I would also have liked to see Emma Donoghue in the book and, maybe, Des Hogan.

There, I did end up doing the clichéd thing but maybe, when reviewing an anthology (however briefly), it can’t be avoided. Would I encourage you to buy it? Well, if you are not familiar with Irish short fiction of the 20th Century, yes. If you're looking for ultra-contemporary Irish short stories, not so much. But it's a good overview of many of the writers who paved the way for the rest of us and for that alone, it's worth the investment (€18.89 from The Book Depository, delivered). Or maybe Santa Claus will be gifting it this year.

CALL FOR YOUNG POETS (under 30)

IdeasTap, an online creative network and funding body for emerging artists, has teamed up with Clinic to give two young poets a full workshop and mentoring with Faber New Poet, Jack Underwood.

In addition, each will have a poem published in Clinic’s 2011 anthology and will perform at the Clinic Anthology launch event in London.

Applicants must be 16 to 30 years old and submit two poems, no longer than 200 words each.

Closing date for applications is December 17th 2010.

To apply or for more information go to here.