cover image Cabbage and Bones

Cabbage and Bones

Caledonia Kearns. Owl Publishing Company, $24.95 (304pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-5579-5

The 24 distinct voices that animate this strong collection share a feel for the power of incantatory prose, but they provide different generational views of the Irish in America. There are harrowing tales of domineering mothers and drunken fathers, of hapless daughters who, rather than marry the men chosen for them, take married lovers or choose mates from other cultures. Oppressive nuns are common, yet not rendered in cliche; in a story by Maura Stanton, a neurotic teacher tyrannizes the classroom but ends up being the object of her pupils' pity. Elsewhere, dutiful daughters tend invalid mothers, and young women, trapped in modern-day cycles of childbearing, yearn for escape. There are excerpts from the novels of such well-known writers as Ruth McKenney, Anna Quindlen, Alice McDermott and Maureen Howard; a poem from Tess Gallagher; and stories from Mary McGarry Morris, Valerie Sayers, Mary Gordon and Mary McCarthy. The volume is also a showcase for such up-and-coming contemporaries as Stephanie Grant, Eileen FitzGerald, Erin McGraw and Helena Mulkerns. Maureen Brady's affecting account of a lesbian's pilgrimage to her ancestral home is deepened by a surprising romantic interlude. Ethnicity aside, these women are all talented storytellers. One wishes, however, that editor Kearns had translated some of the Gaelic phrases. Agent: Victoria Sanders. (Nov.)