cover image A World Full of Places: And Other Stories

A World Full of Places: And Other Stories

Michael Carragher. Blackstaff Press, $15.95 (176pp) ISBN 978-0-85640-595-2

Even when the Irish leave Ireland, the land lingers within them. That's the impression Carragher gives in these 13 engaging short stories populated by thoroughly believable characters. In ""Strange Sounds from a Far-off Land,"" Phelim McGilloray, an assistant professor of English in Montana, hears the cry of a banshee and thinks it heralds his father's imminent death back in Ireland. But the banshee might just be a Montana wildcat caught in a trap--or a banshee heralding the death of McGilloray's own marriage. Irish culture is atmospherically represented: curses from The Shining Ones, the pervasive shadow of Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, pints of Guinness, the smell of boiled potatoes and a lot of Irish slang and idiom course through the pages. Some of the dialogue is written in so convincing a brogue that it can be tough going for American readers. The narratives, with few exceptions, revolve around dirt-poor or downtrodden souls coping with the difficulties of daily existence, whether on the verge of WWI or in the present. But even as Carragher deals in the ironies of men whose desires far outreach their grasps, he brings a distant, observant sympathy to their lives. (July)