Description

A collection of short fiction
by Eddie Stack


Published in 1990, Eddie Stack's first collection of short stories received immediate critical acclaim both in the U.S. and in Ireland. The seven stories in this collection are set in the West of Ireland. From the opening tale, "Time Passes," to the final story "Derramore," these pieces reveal the soul of a community ­­­ its hopes, dreams and schemes. In The West, fatalism and possibility run side by side, the Otherworld is as near as the Church. The double focus of the Irish.
With storyteller intimacy, Eddie Stack evokes life in a series of almost cinematic prose portraits of people, places and situations. The stories are smooth, each one remarkably different, but the click together to form a pattern. With its wit, originality and sensitivity, The West belongs in the best tradition of Irish writing.

REVIEWS
"Variously fantastic, comic, elegiac and nostaligic, Mr. Stack's fiction is versatile and engaging...a vivid, compassionate, authentic voice...securing (him) a place in the celebrated tradition of his country's storytelling." 
New York Times Book Review

"The fantastical and the everyday combine with wit, sharpness and brio....Never sentimental, often funny, always accurate, this is pithy, finely-tuned writing of a high order." London Observer

"Exceptionally fine tuned...an authentic voice of the migrant Irish." 
San Francisco Chronicle