Saints and Sinners

Irish author Edna O'Brien has been writing short stories for more than forty years. This collection, which has just won the Frank O'Connor International Award, demonstrates that she remains a master of the short story. Its scope, depth and the energy with which O'Brien confronts the short story form are astounding for a writer whose career is now well into its sixth decade.

Few of the characters in this collection actually live in Ireland. Most, like O'Brien, left many years ago, consigning the country, its landscape and the cataclysmic social and economic shifts of recent years, to the realm of memory and imagination. In 'Shovel Kings' the narrator befriends an elderly Irishman in a Camden pub where he tells the story of the Irish immigrant, enduring harsh conditions building infrastructure for hostile Londoners. In 'Sinners' a neurotic boarding-house keeper obsesses over the sordid encounters she imagines taking place in her bedrooms from the noises she hears in the night. The narrator of 'Madame Cassandra', offers a stream of consciousness account of a visit to a fortune teller that gives away more about her and her husband than she might intend. In 'Green Georgette', a study in Irish manners, two women welcome a new neighbor to the area only to be startled by a subtle snobbery.

Tinged with loss and often desperately sad, this collection surveys a uniquely Irish psyche; its characters, alien at home and abroad, are overwhelmed by loss and a longing that speaks powerfully to all of us as exiles from our own past.