A Selection of the Best in Contemporary Irish Fiction
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Benedict Kiely - The Collected Stories of Benedict Kiely
Methuen

Benedict Kiely’s book consists of forty-nine stories. You might expect by the end to find it all a bit predictable; that you’d be able to tell roughly where any story was going. But in fact each one intrigues.
This is not because the plots are made of tricks and turns or the laying of false clues, it’s that Kiely’s subject is finally the mysteriousness of human beings. We are drawn in by a voice that is intimate, all-knowing and yet very slightly disbelieving, and we learn that people do not behave as we would expect.
Kiely gives a strong sense of the texture of ‘normal’ Irish society, especially as lived in Catholic small county town. His descriptions are never painterly or impressionistic, but are simply as the story-teller tells.
Review by Bridget O’Toole, Books Ireland.

The Collected Stories of Benedict Kiely

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