The West: Stories from Ireland
The seven stories in this collection are set in the West of Ireland. From the opening tale, "Time Passes," to the final story "Derramore," these pieces reveal the soul of a community-its hopes, dreams and schemes. In The West, fatalism and possibility run side by side, the Otherworld is as near as the Church. The double focus of the Irish.
With storyteller intimacy, Eddie Stack evokes life in a series of almost cinematic prose portraits of people, places and situations. The stories are smooth, each one remarkably different, but the click together to form a pattern. With its wit, originality and sensitivity, The West belongs in the best tradition of Irish writing.
"Variously fantastic, comic, elegiac and nostaligic, Mr. Stack's fiction is versatile and engaging...a vivid, compassionate, authentic voice...securing (him) a place in the celebrated tradition of his country's storytelling." New York Times Book Review
"Exceptionally fine tuned...an authentic voice of the migrant Irish."
San Francisco Chronicle
“There’s a genuinely wild and fugitive comic sence in these tales that puts one in mind of Myles na Gopaleen as much as the salt spume dam, George Makay Brown. Never sentimental, often funny, always accurate, this is pithy, finely tuned writing of a high order.” The Observer
Out of the Blue
These stories recount the peculiar and amazing experiences that befall Eddie Stack's native people, at home and abroad. In "Angels," Mr. Fine the eccentric chemist, reappears aftlong hiatus and enchants the town with his violin. The dead arise to rewrite Irish history in "Ellie," when a recent immigrant to Ohio meets a widow long gone from Ireland.
A donkey with an attitude hassles a small town in "Jack Ass Blues" and shakes the authority of and State. "Song for Angie" shuttles between Ireland and San Francisco, retracing through music, the lives of a church organist and her troubadour niece. In another tale, a foreign cabby ruffles local racists when he joins the town taxi rank. Love tests a champion Irish dancer in "Flying Visit," and the title story, "Out of the Blue," concerns of a mysterious funeral coming to Ireland from Chicago.
Surreal, naturalistic, cinematic, humorous and sometimes poignant: all styles intersect and play, often in a single tale. In this diverse and engaging collection, Eddie Stack takes us into worlds of magic and mystery, from which we emerge with a smile.
"This second collection of short stories by Eddie Stack has a wonderful sense of unreality, of weirdness among Irish characters and of downright fun."
Irish Emigrant
"Eddie Stack’s stories jet back and forth across the Atlantic, contrasting small town Ireland and big city US. Every time they land, the author seems to test the borderline of what might and might not be possible in downtown bars, crumbling dance halls and drizzly farms. The result is a remarkably consistent collection of short stories.”
Ian Wild, Southword
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