You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Flaming stories of the necessity and abuse of connection, and the persistence of wonder.
Out of Dublin, a survivor’s captivating story of loss, abuse, and resilience, is a stunning short memoir told with startling honesty and vulnerability. Perhaps what’s most arresting about this work, above its unique voice, above its call to end silence, is the depth of its author’s capacity for compassion, love, and forgiveness.
Fiction. Ethel Rohan knows how to startle the dark. Her compassionate intensity illuminates the prose and the people of GOODNIGHT NOBODY—thirty short stories that are as sharp as they are earnest, luminous stories that reflect with sparse elegance our humanity and our often brokenness. As the moon circles the Earth, always separate but always drawn near, so too the cratered, alienated characters of GOODNIGHT NOBODY orbit others, striving to connect. By turns heartwarming and heartrending, this collection constellates ordinary lives gone wrong—the disgraced Dublin Reservist; the wife jealous of bees; the pyromaniacal mother craving warmth; the one-armed identical twin facing incompleteness; the photographer striving for the perfect image before losing her sight; and a host of others in trouble. Lives gone wrong, but always trying to get right.
One woman's path to rediscovering herself through music, romance, and a little vigilantism Inside Half Moon Bay, a sparkling California coastal town, Ester Prynn is dulled and diminished by struggles with work, money, marriage, her senile father, a troubled teenage son, and old guilt she can’t assuage. When a masked gunman robs the convenience store where Ester works, he upends her fraught life and propels her toward passions buried, like singing; desires discovered, like a same-sex infatuation; and wrongs righted, like bringing the violent assailant to justice. But as the armed robber commits new crimes and continues to evade capture, the trauma from the holdup climbs, threatening Ester’s newfound delights and longings and forcing her to contend with her burning regrets and what-ifs. In the reckoning between Ester and these growing, molten upsets, she’s faced with enormous choices and must determine what and who can bring her to her best life.
'A brave and moving book.' John Banville 'Poignant and inspiring.' Eowyn Ivey How do you carry on, when you lose someone you love? Big Billy Brennan has suffered the greatest tragedy a parent can know - he has just lost his son. His family is reeling, and his marriage is a partnership in name alone. Billy is also obese: at nearly 30 stone, he can barely walk down the street without breaking a sweat. In his small Irish town, he can't escape his notoriety. So Billy decides to take on the two things weighing him down - his grief, and his fat - and in doing so he's going to try to stop the terrible plague of suicide that is haunting the youth of Ireland. The Weight of Him is an unforgettable, big-hearted novel about loss and recovery, and what can be achieved when an everyday hero finds the courage to transform his life.
In her fiercely beautiful memoir, Jeannine Ouellette recollects fragments of her life and arranges them elliptically to witness each piece as torn and whole, as something more than itself. Caught between the dramatic landscapes of Lake Superior and Casper Mountain, between her stepfather's groping and her mother's erratic behavior, Ouellette lives for the day she can become a mother herself and create her own sheltering family. But she cannot know how the visceral reality of both birth and babies will pull her back into the body she long ago abandoned, revealing new layers of pain and desire, and forcing her to choose between her idealistic vision of perfect marriage and motherhood, and the birthright of her own awakening flesh, unruly and alive. The Part That Burns is a story about the tenacity of family roots, the formidable undertow of trauma, and the rebellious and persistent yearning of human beings for love from each other.
Born a bastard to a teenage mother in the slums of 1950s Dublin, Martha has to be a fighter from the very start. As her mother moves from man to man, and more children follow, they live hand-to-mouth in squalid, freezing tenements, clothed in rags and forced to beg for food. But just when it seems things can't get any worse, her mother meets Jackser. Despite her trials, Martha is a child with an irrepressible spirit and a wit beyond her years. She tells the story of her early life without an ounce of self-pity and manages to recreate a lost era in which the shadow of the Catholic Church loomed large and if you didn't work, you didn't eat. Martha never stops believing she is worth more than the hand she has been dealt, and her remarkable voice will remain with you long after you've finished the last line.
Fiction. In this stripped-raw debut collection, Ethel Rohan's thirty stories swell with broken, incomplete people yearning to be whole. Through tight language and searing scenarios, Rohan brings to life a plethora of characters—exposed, vulnerable souls who are achingly human.
Cut Through the Bone, a collection of short fiction by Ethel Rohan
A guy walks into a bar car and... From here the story could take many turns. When this guy is David Sedaris, the possibilities are endless, but the result is always the same: he will both delight you with twists of humor and intelligence and leave you deeply moved. Sedaris remembers his father's dinnertime attire (shirtsleeves and underpants), his first colonoscopy (remarkably pleasant), and the time he considered buying the skeleton of a murdered Pygmy. With Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, David Sedaris shows once again why his work has been called "hilarious, elegant, and surprisingly moving" (Washington Post).