Happiness and other Stories
Happiness and other Stories
By Mary Lavin
Happiness and Other Stories is perhaps the most cherished of all the acclaimed collections by Mary Lavin, who was not just one of Ireland's major writers, but ranked among the greatest short-story writers of the twentieth century in the English language.
B-format, paperback | 192pp | ISBN: 978-1-84840-104-4 | Release Date: November 2011
Happiness and Other Stories is perhaps the most cherished of all the acclaimed collections by Mary Lavin, who was not just one of Ireland's major writers, but ranked among the greatest short-story writers of the twentieth century in the English language. The stories in this classic collection explore the relationships and intimate emotions of her characters that are from a vanished Ireland but still resonate today. Last published over four decades ago, New Island's Modern Irish Classics series brings this insightful and moving collection of stories back to life.
“Joyce Carol Oates called her one of the finest short-story writers of the twentieth century, and there’s much to love about the work of Mary Lavin...there’s the brilliance with which her fiction gets at the stuff of human interaction, in all its awkwardness, in all the ways in which, muddled and mortified, this interaction will have to do us, because it’s all we’ve got. There’s the immense power with which she depicts the inner lives of women, particularly mothers and widows, women who have no reason to be anything other than honest with themselves about the realities of their situation. Lavin evokes those situations with sympathy and with candor and with, in many cases, a frank and delicious comedy.”
