The History of Magpies

'I've lived in this place for three years after returning from England.
There was an echo in the landscape at night that no one had patience
with, a voice trying to tell you something, trying to tell a story.'

(From 'The 'Metlar')

Here are twelve scintillating fresh tales by one of Ireland's leading
writers, who has extended and redefined the tradition of the Irish short
story with inimitable verbal force. Embedded in Hogan's uniquely glancing
poetic style, they form capsule character studies and micro-histories of
society's underbelly, variously located in the streets and back alleys of
Edinburgh, London, Zagreb, Cork, Dublin, and in the small rural townscape
provinces: Kerry to Limerick, Kinsale, Athlone and beyond, each refracted
in compressed jewels of painterly prose that explodes in kaldeiscopic
bursts

of colour and imagery.

These stories are vividly peopled by young homosexuals, Travellers and
priests, borstal boys and joyriders, prisoners on remand, hostel dwellers,
drinkers and addicts, artisans and the unemployed, and treat their
marginalized lives with celebratory dispassion. The story titles alone
speak for their milieu: 'The Big River,' 'Cafe Remember,' 'Through the
Town,' "Brimstone Butterfly,' 'Thornback Ray,' 'The Spindle Tree,' 'The
Metlar,' 'Walking Through Truth Land,' and 'Famine Rain.' Here is a writer
at the top of his game, documenting an Ireland where few have dared to
tread.


Genre: Literary Fiction