cover image The Tallystick & Other Stories

The Tallystick & Other Stories

Bryan MacMahon. Poolbeg Press, $29.95 (248pp) ISBN 978-1-85371-338-5

MacMahon's short stories, though too often slight, are laden with traditional Irish voices. ``A Lesson in Love,'' the opening tale of the 17 collected here, describes a didactic battle between an illiterate butcher and his schoolteacher wife. ``Jack Furey'' is about a man who comes to discover-through the testimony of his elderly mother's senility-who his real father was. And the title story tells of a neat little turn-of-the-century court case (which it then surrounds with too many pages of historical expostulation). In fact, although most of the stories are set in the present, nearly all have a distinct 19th-century feel-and that's a credit to MacMahon (The Master), a retired Irish schoolmaster who's able to convey persuasively his lifetime of acquaintance with these drapers, farmers and butchers. It's only too bad that he so often portrays them negatively; surely not all rural Irish folk are simple or mean. Still, at its workmanlike best, MacMahon's prose achieves a beautiful sort of preciousness. ``The Telescope,'' for example, which concerns an obsessed man who drags his confused new bride throughout Dublin in search of a spyglass, is the full equal of O. Henry's ``The Gift of the Magi.'' (Jan.)