The Mourning Thief and Other Stories

Passionate, lyrical, evocative with endings which out-Joyce Joyce in their use of epiphany. He has a style all of his own, with a poetic melancholy that winnows down all that very irish style of O`Brien, Flaherty and McGahern but somehow makes it modern and current. The description of `poetic` and `lyrical` shouldn`t take away from the fact that he knows how to draw real characters in their bedsits and dancehalls and theatre groups. A critic said he had created a `newly-minted mythology` with his style and that is so apt. The ghosts of the Irish past are always there bearing down on his characters


Genre: Literary Fiction