Death stalks the reader of John F. Deane's latest collection of short stories. In many of them we meet "strange and terrible forms that enter life suddenly and tear it apart", and two of them centre on shocking acts of violence against old women in rural Ireland, which in turn yield a horrific retribution.
So the majority of these stories are not "entertainments" as Graham Greene used to call some of his novels. Deaneland is not Greeneland. The spirit of the coffin-maker of the title story shadows the entire collection.
Nevertheless there is an affinity with Greene. In 14 stories, Deane creates a very distinct world. If death is the shadow of that world, desire is the fire. Deane's tales are saturated with unassuagable and unfathomable desire. It's as if the Augustinian restlessness of the heart (ever restless until it rests in God) has come and dwelt among us in Ireland, but without any of the consoling certainty of final rapture.
In Deane's world, there is no steady ascent of desire. Desire judders - a word beloved of Deane - rather than harmonises. It moves from sexual longing to incoherent guilt, from wild angry probings to mute grief and despair, leading to the embracing of death. Death again.
The young woman, leaving behind the privations of her convent courtship with Christ, and turning "light and carefree, back into the world" is a rare moment in this collection.
It may seem perverse to speak of pleasure in the midst of this world marked by torment, but there is an invigorating incisiveness in most of Deane's prose that gives a stronger pleasure than most so-called entertainments. With poetic precision, the craving or emptiness of the heart, the tang of rugged seascape settings and the "gapped and broken and empty mouths" of the many old people who inhabit these pages, are sketched. In this gnarled world, nothing is manicured or designer-labelled.
There is humour, too (in the very funny story of the "Nighthawk" peeping Tom railing at the "fuss and fustiness of suburban day") and, especially in the shorter stories, Deane deftly captures the tone of voice and twist of language of his characters.
The thematic core of Deane's collection is condensed in "The Coffin Master" novella, a terrible tale of equalising justice. This is risk-taking writing in which vivid characterisation and a host of memorable phrases and images draw one in.
Finally, though the plot seemed too allegorical and fantastic, I wanted to believe in Patcho, the disfigured but noble gunman ("one who was broken but would not yield") but the mechanics and artifice of the story, its pulleys and ropes (real pulleys and ropes are important in the narrative) showed through.
Strong themes, so, from Deane - played out without a safety net in sight.
Jack Hanna is a journalist and writer. His book The Friendship Tree came out in paperback last autumn.