Cork Stories delivers a flavoursome masala of work by authors based in or from Cork, and set in both city and county. It shines with a selection of work that successfully explores serious contemporary Irish themes while at the same time manifesting the lively, inimitable Cork humour for which the city is renowned.
Its opening shot, The Cook and the Star by Anne O’Leary, takes us on the set of a Hollywood film being made in Cork, starring an ageing superstar whose main confidante during the shoot is the Cork woman who prepares his meals. It’s a surprising, bittersweet tale of disparate people who share not unsimilar regrets.
Danny Denton’s sparkling parable, A Love Letter in the Midsummer, places two middle-aged superheroes, Godzilla and King Kong, in a flat near Douglas Street, as they discuss their life options now that the bloom of their youth has begun to fade.
On Buxton Hill, by Kevin Barry, is a slow-burning heartbreaker. Recounted by one of the tenants in an old, run-down house (“the waft of rent allowance off it that would stall a horse”), the story can be laugh-out-loud funny. Yet with subtle detail and pacing, the horror of the narrator’s situation is revealed until we see a brittle soul unable to cope with his world.
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Danielle MacLaughlin’s exquisitely written Along the Heron-Studded River also addresses the fragility of our mental wellbeing, this time in a setting of relentless 21st century rural isolation.
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Elsewhere, in Ciúnas by Fiona Whyte, a man faces his childhood demons when he is forced to revisit the institution where he grew up; in Lost Property by Mary Morrissey, some post-recession karma avenges an evil once perpetrated by a Celtic Tiger developer.
Deftly interspersed with more reflective stories, too, you’ll find the glorious satire of Black Dog Running by Sean Tanner, or the quirky magic realism of Noah Should Have Read Comics, a cautionary tall tale by Marie Gethins.
The tome is one of a series of themed collections from Doire Press (Galway Stories from 2013; and Belfast Stories from 2019), thus within its covers, all locations are pure Cork: a place map is even provided. For the short story lover, whether a native of the county or not, Cork Stories can’t fail to please.
