SHORT STORIES: In her introduction to this collection of 11 original short stories, Caroline Walsh makes the important point that many of the writers gathered together here have published successful novels, thus challenging that supposed trajectory for writers that positions the short story merely as a stepping-stone to the more mature art form that, theoretically at least, is the novel. Derek Hand reviews
It is an appeal to begin considering the short story form as something requiring skill from both the author and, perhaps, the reader.
Since James Joyce, readers and writers have come to realise that the Irish short story need not only aspire to the well-told anecdote or exist in a state of the perpetually "overheard". It can also, in the proper hands, be experienced as a literary form that is well crafted and which can, despite its brevity, extend its significance far beyond the simply local.
Walsh also draws attention to how the short story might be considered the literary form best suited to expressing modernity with its dislocation, fragmentation and incompleteness. Certainly, it is a form wholly appropriate to the telling of Irish stories from the present moment. Gathered here is Irish life from the city to the countryside and back again. Life, too, from other perspectives and other places informs this collection, as indeed it informs our daily lives. Diverse voices, diverse spaces, diverse realities are juxtaposed; and yet, amid this variety, a unifying strain binds these individual pieces together.
It says something of the contemporary Zeitgeist that underpinning most, if not all, of these stories is a narrative suggesting hope in the midst of a postmodern nightmare where "here" could be "anywhere", and where one's individual existence loses definition because "anywhere" is nowhere. There is hope in the sense that these stories focus on the possibility that individuals can - even in small ways - begin connecting meaningfully with one another.
The tone is set from the first story, 'Barber-Surgeons', by Aidan Mathews. Here it is the minute gestures, the seemingly insignificant moments shared that carry the full weight of what is possible in human relationships. It is a feeling reiterated in Éilís Ní Dhuibhne's delicately poised 'It is a Miracle', where one is not certain at the close as to who this miracle has been for. Claire Keegan's 'Night of the Quicken Trees' also shows how people can come together in their pain and hurt. Mary Morrissy, too, emphasises the damage that can be inflicted by one person on another while simultaneously illustrating how steps can be made toward redemption.
Sean O'Reilly continues to delineate the darker side of contemporary life. His main character in 'Playboy' manifests a violent, sordid reaction to the emptiness of Celtic Tiger existence, striking out at anything and everything. Ultimately, though, the real hate is directed inwards. A more upbeat note is sounded by Blánaid McKinney, who takes a wry look at advertising in the urban jungle, offering her readers something of an unexpected answer to this modern phenomenon.
Tom Humphries rails against the inauthenticity of a modern Ireland that celebrates, without irony, all that is surface and without depth in his story 'Australia Day'. He is a writer still learning his craft as this piece oscillates uneasily between journalistic assertion (something he is used to) and wonderfully rendered dialogue and action.
Joseph O'Neill and Molly McCloskey set their stories in America. O'Neill's 'Ponchos' is at times comic, but beneath the humour is a real voice expressing real pain. McCloskey is from America, and she weaves a wistful, knowledgeable tale of adolescent relationships whose impact lingers long after the moment. McCloskey writes seemingly effortless prose, and her story is utterly compelling because of this.
John MacKenna's story 'Maps' captures perfectly the complexities and tensions within the family set-up. His narrator's uncertainty about his own position at the close of the story is a feeling taken up by Keith Ridgway in 'Grid Work'. This final story concerns the fragility of those constructions by which we live, be they personal myths or economic ideologies. Though tenuous, they are all we have: without them, and without the ability to create them, we are lost. It has ever been thus.
As a snapshot of the best writing from several of the best writers in Ireland at the present moment, Arrows in Flight succeeds magnificently. Anyone who is interested in the state of current Irish prose should own this collection.
Derek Hand is a lecturer in English in St Patrick's College, Drumcondra. His book, John Banville: Exploring Fictions, was published by the Liffey Press earlier this year
Arrows in Flight: Stories from a New Ireland. Edited with an introduction by Caroline Walsh. Scribner/Townhouse, 312pp. €16.99 hbk, €12.99 pbk
Derek Hand