If there is something distinguish about the irish stories , it may be that people die in them .you would not think there was enough space , in a few thousand words to fit a corpse but that is not a greater problem to irish writer , who comes from a country where people use to die with greater frequency than any where else.which is to say atleast once each.bernard mcleaverty is doubly cursed , blessed , by growing up in belfast, a city where people not only died , but were also killed__and if it is hard to fit death into the short space of a story , how much harder to fit murder , and sectarian murder at that ? it takes the quite skills of someone like Mcleaverty to rescue these lives from history, and give them a story instead . only some of this collection is set during the troubles , however .matter of life and death is , as the little suggests about how we live with death of all kinds .the dead in these stories come in many varities , being nearly dead , freshly dead , long dead, passionately murdered, or callously bombed.the stories are also about the bereaved , and about people to cacth a glimpse of theire own mortalitaly and survive it . despite all of which there is nothing depressing about this book at all.
these are stories in the easiest and most pleasureable sense of the word McLeaverty’s work is in a line from Cheakhov, via Frank Oconner he relates the kind of insidents you might hear from some one at a bus stop or in a bed , a house is burgled , a women is raped a nighbour bed parking is not what it seems what ever happen is both real and in riched by the telling of it, and McLeaverty makes this look like a natural and obvious things to do.
’’it is not ofcoures fans will recognise him in the details in the finar cuts of colloquial speach , his micro scopic eye and an ear for noises off ’’
all of this anchored in personality, distinctiveness of people bieng one of his great dlights. ’’these days she was like eggs he writes of an old women getting out of bed .Some of the details are a line from checkhove via Frankocconer , McLeaverty odds in the way that life is odd but they are always ordinary at the same time. A young women in shock sees her feet , as she walks ago’’ this way and that __like herring bones’’ ................up the cost the longest story here returns to the mcleaverty’s novell ’’grace notes ’’ but this time with a more savage that it is at first time almost difficult to read.he is refining his methods as he goes he is also putting a greater emphasis on truth and truth telling, leaning in places towards non fiction. the story belfadt memory is just what it says in the tittle : it draws no geater conclusion and is slight as the truth can sometime be.
’’the wedding ring is dedicated to a real person Ellen 1884-1904 who, for the duration of a new story lies as a new corpse on her bed , while her 2 maiden aunts ready her shroud in the kicthen down stairs . McLeaverty is a master of domastic__ there is a part of this writer that will always be happiest near a women at her ironboard the talk of goffering irons and of the sighing noice that moist lase makes under them , is the sexiest part of the story ’’is that water warm enough?’’said one of the aunts as she gets ready to wash her body down.
there are some great tough irish women here, so keenly observed as to be almost comical, though they are also keen enough them self. one of them , in a nursing home , hates the way southern irish people talk, ’’like honey dripping . smarms and wheedle ___ like they cant do enough for you like you are the queen of may’’.
McLeaverty’s characterstics are in a charge of the language he uses, which makes each of these stories an act of generosity from the writer if not always one of the consolation.
Flash Back:.
people die .there is no getting arround this fact. in ’’visiting takabuti’’ we hear the ’’irish story’’ of the soul that hits the minds. At the moment of death’’the soul leaves the body and tip toes to the door ways . then turnes and goes back to see the body that sheltered it all these year ’’