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Mary Beckett (1926 - 2013)
It was Mary Denvir, the proprietor of Bookfinder's in Belfast, who recommended Mary Beckett's collection, A Belfast Woman, to me. The Poolbeg Press paperback edition she was selling was second-hand. I paid 20 pence for it, took it home and read it in one go.
The stories are mostly about women in Belfast and they are all marvels – simple, pure, piercing and true: they are also – to which some take exception, but not me, I love this about them – quietist. These are emphatically stories about ordinary people, their lives of quiet desperation and their hard-won but always understated victories. For instance, consider this from The Master and the Bombs: "It was crowded down town that Saturday and a policewoman was at the pedestrian crossing. I stood among the crowd waiting to cross and it suddenly came to me that it was a very unimportant thing that I was unhappy." Rarely is so much done with so little. Mary Beckett also wrote a novel, Give Them Stones, and a second short story collection, A Literary Life – both admirable too.
Other favourites: Elizabeth Bowen and Maria Edgeworth.
Carlo Gébler is the author of a range of books including The Eleventh Summer (1985); How to Murder a Man (1998) and A Good Day For A Dog (2008). In 2000 he published an autobiography, Father and I: a memoir. He teaches creative writing at HMP Maghaberry, where he is writer-in-residence.
