James Lawless
\nPublished in Sunday Independent 22\/06\/2014<\/p>\n
Waiting for the Bullet, Madeleine D\u2019Arcy, Doire Press \u20ac12<\/p>\n
Madeleine D\u2019Arcy\u2019s stories begin in medias res as good short stories should \u2014 ‘Fintan can smell warm chips as he enters the pub\u2019 kickstarts the story Is This Like Scotland?<\/p>\n
Notwithstanding a few clich\u00e9s such as the predictable portrait of the elderly lady in Savage or the author\u2019s fondness for the words weakly\u2019 and weary\u2019 or describing green fields as a patchwork quilt\u2019, there lies herein a wonderful laconic telling of things: I never gave Terence a hard time for being straight, did I?\u2019 contains in one sentence a multitude of intimations in the story A Good Funeral.<\/p>\n
D\u2019Arcy can write adeptly in either gender or in a different nationality \u2014 the American in Across the Duck Pond is convincingly drawn.<\/p>\n
The prose is simple, realistic, but never pedestrian, engrossing and page-turning. We are left for the most part with pure story, easy to read clicking in the high emotions of love, loss and longing, yet hinting of deeper mysteries in our psyches in the passing reference to animals in The Fox and the Placenta or a swan in Across the Duck Pond. However, the reader could sometimes be disappointed reading these slices of life, engrossing as they may be, for their lack in the main of any lyrical description characteristic of some of the best short stories.<\/p>\n
D\u2019Arcy creates a sense of immediacy in her frequent use of the present tense and first person narrative which can be a bit overdone.<\/p>\n
She is very good on locating telling details, such as the twine for carrying a parcel in Esm\u00e9\u2019s Weekend or Fergus\u2019s habit of rubbing the insides of Esm\u00e9 palm with his thumb.<\/p>\n
Toy guns, virtual pheasants on iPhones and dependence on mobiles all feature \u2014 she uses texting to brilliant effect to build up the marital tensions in The Wolf Note.<\/p>\n
There is an occasional lapse in argot: Would Swedish Annika have really uttered the nuanced, She could have grown the tea by now,\u2019 when commenting on a tardy waitress, while in another breath, albeit to humorous effect, she refers to Gougane Barra as Google Barry?<\/p>\n
But D\u2019Arcy knows her terrain well as she refers to the uneven felling of Coillte forests reminding Fintan of a bad haircut\u2019.<\/p>\n
The title story, about a toy gun which husband Turlough childishly brings home is the best. His wife turns the gun into something sinister at a party which has the effect of transporting her husband from his childish pranks into a terrifying adult realisation after a game of faux-Russian roulette.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s only a bit of fun,\u2019 says Turlough of the realistic noise the toy gun makes when fired.<\/p>\n
Despite this utterance becoming a bit tautological, the gun\u2019s resonance, especially in the northern Ireland context, makes this a story worthy of Chekhov.<\/p>\n
It is an epiphanic moment for the husband but also for the wife as she decides to keep the gun, knowing that as he weeps joined to her in bed, it endows her with emotional power over him.<\/p>\n
These stories of ordinary human lives are so absorbing that one wants them to continue beyond the page, and feels a sense of loss when they jolt to their abrupt endings.<\/p>\n
James Lawless\u2019 latest novel is Knowing Women<\/p>\n
Sunday Independent
\n– See more at: http:\/\/www.independent.ie\/entertainment\/books\/books-simple-snapshots-of-love-loss-and-longing-30371367.html#sthash.zkl9STXd.dpuf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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