Fables of the Irish Intelligentsia

The characters in this uniformly excellent first collection of short stories inhabit a strange world where people sing folk songs in Sanskrit and Shakespeare's Hamlet has Celtic origins. Fitzpatrick offers a dozen ribald and hilarious modern fables that revel in the self-professed eccentricity of the Irish people. The brief prologue reveals an annual convocation of lunatics who come together on the Irish coast to eat watercress, drink holy water and celebrate their lunacy. Fitzpatrick's protagonists, too, display a fine madness. Finnula so desperately wants to lose her virginity that she surrenders it to a brisk Englishman and in the process confirms the ``English disease,'' a malady characterized by fear of children and a craving for dragons. Slattery is an unrepentant Marxist who is so upset by the fall of the Sandinistas and the collapse of Soviet governments in Eastern Europe that he must trick his frigid mother into giving him a reassuring touch. Controversy surrounds Fitzpatrick: Having been selected for the the Irish Times /Aer Lingus Prize, she lost it amid rumors that she is not only not Irish but also a man. The claims will strike readers as incredible. The stories reflect a sensibility not only female but patently Irish. (Jan.)