Despite this, confusion is created: I read that A Cry From Heaven is (quote) ‘a version of Deirdre of the Sorrows by J.M. Synge’, and am livid. The story is older than all of us – as Synge knew so well – and how could anyone have the temerity (or be stupid enough) to write a version of his play. ...
She would, he knew, have so far enjoyed her own funeral. The hush of conversation with old friends, the conjuring up of memories, the arrival of people she would not have seen for years, all of this would have put a gleam into her eyes. But she would not, he thought, have enjoyed being alone now ...
She sought a position with her back to the light. He wondered if she remembered that two, or even three, of her heroines had entered rooms in this way and sat happily and deliberately with their backs to a large window so that the company might view them in the most flattering light. ...
When the cheque came with the back-dated increase, she lodged it carefully in the bank. It made a difference to her that it was there if she needed it but she lived on what she earned from Gibney’s, her pension and the money Fiona gave her. She took an interest in Charlie ...
He watched the colour, the mixture of mud and water, and the small currents and pockets of movement within the flow. It was a Friday morning at the end of July; the traffic was heavy on the quays. Later, when the court had finished its sitting he would come back again and look out once more at th...
'You must have come back very early,' she said, and immediately realised that she sounded as though she were accusing her mother. 'You look tired,' she said then, trying to soften her tone. 'Declan wasn't well again this morning,' her mother said coldly. Declan stared at her. The bruising on his ...
He says he is not growing a beard but he refuses all offers of a razor, soap and a mirror. I’m not sure I want him to have a beard.He has become addicted to soup, which he says is much easier to eat than meat and vegetables when you’re in bed. He’s been lying up there for ten days now. Sometimes ...
They discuss the difference between men and women in Ireland and America. ‘Guys beating their brains out to keep their wives in mink,’ Mr Madden complains. ‘It’s the women’s fault. No good … Me, I wouldn’t have nothing to do with them.’ Miss Hearne, deeply alert to nuances of education and class,...
There is something hungry and rough in them, a brutality boiling in their blood, which I have seen before and can smell as an animal that is being hunted can smell. But I am not being hunted now. Not any more. I am being cared for, and questioned softly, and watched. They think that I do not know...
He described her old age in “Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931”: Sound of a stick upon the floor, a sound From somebody that toils from chair to chair; Beloved books that famous hands have bound, Old marble heads, old pictures everywhere; Great rooms where travelled men and children found Content or ...