Full name: Walking the Dog: And Other Stories

Author: Bernard MacLaverty Year: 1995 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Short Stories Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780393314533 0393314537

This long-awaited new collection from the noted Irish writer Bernard MacLaverty examines worlds in collision, relationships fragmenting, innocence coming face to face with real life and real death. A Catholic schoolboy playing football has a theological debate with a Protestant policeman; a chess game in Spain is a catalyst for grief and redemption; in the haunting title story a Belfast man out walking his dog is kidnapped at gunpoint. As always, MacLaverty's writing is vivid, exact, and pellucid, his characters perfectly observed, the surface of the prose deceptively still. It is only after we enter the world of the stories that we begin to make out the huge shapes that move there: loss, love, disappointment, fierce joy. This is a powerful, honest, and moving book by one of the great storytellers of our age. Similar books: A Bit on the Side by William Trevor Antarctica by Claire Keegan Bullfighting by Roddy Doyle Cheating at Canasta by William Trevor There Are Little Kingdoms by Kevin Barry Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan Mothers and Sons by Colm Toibin The Rose Garden by Maeve Brennan The Springs of Affection by Maeve Brennan Yesterday's Weather by Anne Enright Fishing the Sloe-Black River by Colum McCann Night in Tunisia by Neil Jordan My Oedipus Complex by Frank O'Connor The Empty Family by Colm Toibin Can't and Won't by Lydia Davis Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace Dirty Words by Todd Robinson An Actor's Life by Duncan Whitehead Selected Stories by Alice Munro