We are a nation of storytellers - and if you ever needed proof, you need look no further than our short story writers. Despite our reputation as a garrulous people, the Irish are also renowned for our ability to capture the essence of a tale through brevity. Here are ten of the best collections by writers hailing from our shores.
1. There Are Little Kingdoms - Kevin Barry
Kevin Barry’s talent for world-building is evident in novels like City of Bohane and Night Boat to Tangier - but the Limerick native’s shorter form work is also brilliant. Barry has published several short story collections, but his 2007 debut heralded a major new talent and was declared by some to be the modern-day equivalent of Joyce’s Dubliners. With stories like Breakfast Wine, you’d be hard-pushed to disagree.
2. William Trevor - The Distant Past
You cannot possibly have a list of Irish short story collections without including the name which many consider to be one of the greatest exponents of the art form. Needless to say, there are countless tomes worthy of your time, but this 1979 compilation - compiled from several of his earlier collections - captures an Ireland both distant and familiar. The title story encapsulates Trevor’s knack for summarising big themes in a recognisable way, telling the story of an elderly and eccentric Protestant brother and sister living near the border as the Troubles begin. But really, anything by the Cork-born literary hero is worth reading.
3. A Slanting of the Sun - Donal Ryan
If you’ve read Donal Ryan’s novels, particularly his stunning debut The Spinning Heart and The Thing About December, you’ll be well aware of what an exquisite writer the Limerickman is. These stories, first published in 2015, continue Ryan’s thread of stories laden with empathy and heart, rooted in modern Ireland and running the gamut of the human experience - from the Traveller community to a priest in Syria, from shopkeepers to schoolgirls and beyond. Beautiful.
4. The Art of the Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories
She is an author and essayist of repute, but Sinéad Gleeson is also known as a fierce champion of other writers - particularly those who may have been overlooked across the eras for whatever reason. Here, she collects a hundred Irish short stories, both classic and contemporary, featuring a diverse assemblage from Maeve Binchy to Blindboy Boatclub. It's a weighty tome, but provides a superb taste of our abundant talent across the generations.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
5. Edna O’Brien - Lantern Slides
Edna O’Brien is best known for her era-defining novels like The Country Girls, but dismiss her short stories at your peril. O’Brien published numerous collections and compilations, but our pick of the bunch is 1990’s Lantern Slides, which won the Los Angeles Times Book for Fiction prize. These evocative stories explore trauma (in stories like The Widow and Storm) and comedy (in Dramas), yet always return to the theme of relationships, which O’Brien evoked so skilfully.
6. Colin Barrett - Young Skins
Barrett announced himself with aplomb in 2013 with this excellent collection that encapsulated the simmering tensions and frustrating mundanities of smalltown Ireland with serious panache. Across six short stories and one novella (Calm With Horses, later adapted for the big screen), Through stunning prose, Barrett painted a bleak but vivid portrait of Glanbeigh, a fictional post-Celtic Tiger town populated by some highly memorable characters, no-hopers, drunks and disillusioned youth.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
7. The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story
Here’s another compilation that should be on every Irish reader’s bookshelf. Published in 2011 and compiled by Anne Enright, you’ll find stories from the last 70 years by some of the best-known Irish authors within these pages; from Roddy Doyle to Colm Toibin, Mary Lavin to Claire Keegan. As Enright explains in the introduction, she chose each entry simply because she enjoys them - but these 31 stories undeniably define Ireland across the decades, too.
8. June Caldwell - Room Little Darker
The clue is in the title of this extraordinary debut; judging by these irresistibly offbeat stories, June Caldwell tends to see the world through a somewhat darker lens. The Dubliner’s wickedly funny turn of phrase is keenly felt in these stories, some of which you could easily imagine being pilfered by Charlie Brooker for a new series of Black Mirror. How about a tale of an S&M-loving couple being livestreamed as sex slaves in rural Leitrim? A story told from the perspective of a foetus? Narratives of addiction and homelessness? Caldwell’s singular style peels back the facade to reveal the raw underbelly of Irish society - and you won’t be able to tear your eyes away from it.
9. Mike McCormack - Getting it in the Head
Mike McCormack came to wider prominence via the success of his astounding 2016 novel Solar Bones, but he had published this excellent short story collection two decades earlier (his 2012 collection Forensic Songs is also worth a read.) Getting it in the Head bagged several awards for McCormack including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and ably illustrated the Mayo man's aptitude for spinning a yarn. Some of these stories are ghoulish and macabre, others rooted in the everyday - but all of them are never anything less than compelling.
10. John McGahern - Creatures of the Earth
McGahern is rightly hailed as one of the greatest literary talents that Ireland has ever produced, and his marvellous short stories are no exception. Having published various collections beginning in 1970, the compilation Creatures of the Earth is both a great starting point for newcomers to McGahern’s work, and an insight into his methodology for established admirers.
Many of these stories are set around his home country of Leitrim, which informed so much of his work, and with these tales, he proved that you don’t necessarily need a sprawling narrative to build stories that move the reader.
And finally... James Joyce - Dubliners
Of course Dubliners is going to make any list of Irish short story collections - it would be downright neglectful to omit it. 111 years after it was published, Joyce's collection of fifteen stories remains one of his most beloved and certainly his most widely-read works. Joyce had a notoriously complex relationship with his hometown, but these stories provide readers with a snapshot of life in the Irish capital and its inhabitants around the turn of the century. If you’ve felt daunted by Ulysses over the years, this collection has been described as a great introduction to Joyce’s world; if nothing else, the closing story (or more accurately, novella) The Dead is a masterpiece well worth reading.
Listen to RTÉ's audio production of Dubliners here. Lauren Murphy is the host of culture podcast Get Around To It.
