William Leith31 October 2013
Several short stories and a novella. The novella, set in Dublin, is superb — very moving and also very sharp. It’s about a divorced Irishman and an English woman who has come to Ireland to work on a movie. She’s in a relationship but only just. O’Connor has a lovely touch for the nuances of important moments — he captures how relationships start, and how they fall apart, beautifully. In one of the stories, a man meets an old friend, and then his wife, on the same evening; in another, a dying woman visits Dublin, and if I said the thing I was about to say next, I would tarnish the perfect ending.
