Cover Design: Fergal Condon
Cover Image: Peadar O'Donoghue
Let's Be Alone Together
An anthology of new short stories
Edited by Declan Meade
Publication Date: 22nd September 2008
Baby, let's get married,
we've been on our own too long.
Let's be alone together.
Let's see if we're that strong.
- Leonard Cohen & Sharon Robinson,
'Waiting for the Miracle'
Ragnar Almqvist, Evelyn Conlon, Danny Denton, Damien Doorley, Michael J. Farrell, Mia Gallagher, D. Gleeson, Rosemary Jenkinson, James Lawless, Colm Liddy, Viv McDade, Emer Martin, Gina Moxley, Helena Nolan, Jim O'Donoghue, Donal O'Sullivan, Breda Wall Ryan, Ingo Schulze, Tom Tierney and William Wall.
Read the editor's introduction.
Following on from the great success of These Are Our Lives (2006), our second anthology features new stories from an entirely new line-up of writers.
Among the twenty featured authors there are three first timers (D. Gleeson, Helena Nolan and Jim O'Donoghue) and a wealth of emerging literary talent alongside better known writers such as Evelyn Conlon, Mia Gallagher, Emer Martin, Ingo Schulze and William Wall.
| Paperback 213 pages €12.99 ISBN 978-1-906539-02-3 |
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| There were no less than three launch parties to get the book under way, in Cork, Dublin, and Bangor Co. Down. Here the editor Declan Meade introduces the anthology and lavishes gratitude and acknowledgements at the Dublin launch party, Crawdaddy 23rd September. |
Reviews & Reactions
The anthology has gotten impressive reviews so far in the major papers. We'll post more as they come in.
A highly readable and entertaining anthology, ranging from the poignant to the bizarre and magical, giving voice to new writing talent alongside more established names from Ireland and abroad.
- Reviewed by Tania Hershman in the short review.
STINGING FLY'S continuing commitment to the short story is just one indication of the form's growing popularity; the other is the number of cross-channel publishers willing to fork out on collections by new and well-known writers. This collection by various writers is characteristically mixed. Some stories here — and they're easily spotted — are written from personal experience, such as Tom Tierney's 'Looking For America'. Others are uniquely original, as in Helena Nolan's mournful and ambiguous 'A Hare's Nest' where a mother, who is recovering from the disappearance of her son, allows herself to be seduced by a total stranger. Then again, maybe she's in shock and, it is hinted, just hallucinating. Maybe she will never recover. In contrast to that, Mia Gallagher's playful 'Polyfilla' is set in south Dublin at a dinner party during which a myopic Lothario eyes up a woman. Cool glass in hand, hot desire in his pants, he moves in only to discover he has badly misjudged her age, and that her face needs a going-over with 'polyfilla'.
- The Sunday Tribune of Oct 12. Reviewed by Tom Widger.
Declan Meade has made astute choices in selecting these stories, which waylay the reader with surprising revelations and insights. Let's Be Alone Together attests to the vibrancy of the Irish short story and to its flexible capacity to render the foibles of human behaviour and the disorderly randomness of modern life.
- The Irish Times weekend edition of Oct 11th. Read the full review by Joyce scholar Anne Fogarty.
Short, intense and simply stunning
Picking through a collection of short stories can be a dispiriting exercise, panning pages of earnest grit to find a minuscule nugget worthy of a wordsmith. Happily, Declan Meade's mix of established, emerging and new writers has produced a literary goldrush.
If there is a single thread running through this collection, it is a simple one - quality. The book should not be read out of a sense of literary duty or a need to be up to date with the latest authors. Read it for one reason only. It is good, very good.
Picking through a collection of short stories can be a dispiriting exercise, panning pages of earnest grit to find a minuscule nugget worthy of a wordsmith. Happily, Declan Meade's mix of established, emerging and new writers has produced a literary goldrush.
If there is a single thread running through this collection, it is a simple one - quality. The book should not be read out of a sense of literary duty or a need to be up to date with the latest authors. Read it for one reason only. It is good, very good.
- The Sunday Business Post of Oct 5th. Read the full review.
The Stinging Fly have quickly become the go-to publishers for cutting edge, short Irish fiction. 2006 saw the publication of the well-received anthology, These Are Our Lives, and last year Kevin Barry carried away the Rooney Prize for There Are Little Kingdoms, a collection of stories set in small-town Ireland, practically quivering on the page with the author's astringent wit. There's plenty more for short story fans to feast on in Let's Be Alone Together, an impressive hodge-podge of light and serious-minded short stories from a cast of well-known authors and gung-ho first-timers.
Understandably, the post-9/11 world is a recurring feature here; in Emer Martin's resonant "Thieves of the Dream," the child of an Iranian father and an Irish mother recounts the precarious position the family find themselves in following the attacks on the Twin Towers, while in Mia Gallagher's "Polyfilla," a drunk and belligerent liberal finds himself physically threatened - and strangely aroused - by a middle-aged harridan.
There's plenty to impress the apolitical too, however: Ragnar Almqvist's "The Dog's Life," a tale of two low-achieving brothers makes for a slight but undeniably quirky slice of slacker fiction; Colm Liddy's winningly-titled "The Bride is Crying in a Toliet Cubicle" offers a salty vignette worthy of Paul Durcan; while Gina Moxley's "Cuts," in which an overweight actress comes to terms with life's setbacks, has a confident, quirky charm. Meanwhile Danny Denton's "An Attempted Resurrection," about a GAA team whose training session is marred by tragedy, is both remarkably plausible and deeeply affecting. Elsewhere, subjects a diverse as infanticide, Viagra and taboo relationships help complete a zesty line-up, the best of which pack a powerful, lingering punch.
Understandably, the post-9/11 world is a recurring feature here; in Emer Martin's resonant "Thieves of the Dream," the child of an Iranian father and an Irish mother recounts the precarious position the family find themselves in following the attacks on the Twin Towers, while in Mia Gallagher's "Polyfilla," a drunk and belligerent liberal finds himself physically threatened - and strangely aroused - by a middle-aged harridan.
There's plenty to impress the apolitical too, however: Ragnar Almqvist's "The Dog's Life," a tale of two low-achieving brothers makes for a slight but undeniably quirky slice of slacker fiction; Colm Liddy's winningly-titled "The Bride is Crying in a Toliet Cubicle" offers a salty vignette worthy of Paul Durcan; while Gina Moxley's "Cuts," in which an overweight actress comes to terms with life's setbacks, has a confident, quirky charm. Meanwhile Danny Denton's "An Attempted Resurrection," about a GAA team whose training session is marred by tragedy, is both remarkably plausible and deeeply affecting. Elsewhere, subjects a diverse as infanticide, Viagra and taboo relationships help complete a zesty line-up, the best of which pack a powerful, lingering punch.
- METRO made it their Fiction of the Week and gave four out of five stars. Reviewed by Daragh Reddin.
Praise for the previous anthology,These Are Our Lives
a celebration of new voices in fiction ... These stories, which revel in mood and atmosphere ... [offer] us images and depictions of the way we live now. Because of this, the aptly named These Are Our Lives is a collection worth having.
- The Irish Times
