Description
Author Photograph: Karl Bissinger
Cover Image: Pearse Street, Dublin (circa 1953) by Nevill Johnson from RTÉ Archives
Cover Design: Fergal Condon
“Maeve Brennan didn’t have to be a woman for her work to be forgotten, though it surely helped. She did not have to become a bag lady for her work to be revived, though that possibly helped too. The story of her mental decline is terrifying for anyone who works with words, who searches her clean, sour sentences for some hint or indication of future madness, and then turns to check their own.
Brennan is, for a new generation of Irish women writers, a casualty of old wars not yet won. The prose holds her revived reputation very well, especially the Irish stories. These feel transparently modern, the way that Dubliners by Joyce feels modern. It is partly a question of restraint. Benedict Kiely, Walter Macken, perhaps even Mary Lavin, ran the risk of being ‘Irish’ on the pages of The New Yorker, which is to say lyrical, or endearing. Frank O’Connor was the cutest of the lot, perhaps, as well as the most successful. Brennan remains precise, unyielding: something lovely and unbearable is happening on the page.”
—from Anne Enright’s introduction
Also available:
The Long-Winded Lady (essays) with an introduction by Belinda McKeon
The Rose Garden (stories) with an introduction by Angela Bourke
