Short Story of the Year longlist

I am very happy that one of my stories has made the Writing.ie Short Story of the Year longlist. More here. Crossing fingers for shortlist luck, now.

If my story does make the shortlist, there will be public voting anon, so I'll be counting on you, my ONE reader, to vote ;) And there'd be a lovely night out at the Irish Book Awards to boot. Glamour!!

Come on, Jupiter, arrange that joyride!!

Irish Women in Literature event

I'm reading at this free 2 day Irish Women in Literature event at Strokestown Park, Thursday 5th October. All welcome!

REVIEW JTJ AND EVENTS

Liam Murphy reviewed Joyride to Jupiter in yesterday's Munster Express:

'There was a time when people expected short stories to be like single theme short novellas, and then magazine fiction changed all that. Stories got shorter and often became like poems, vague like a fleeting image, a flash of emotion, a realisation without resolution. Collections of short stories seemed to be based on a theme or trope; infidelity, expectation, imperfection, loneliness, betrayal and the modern one of uncoupling couples.

Nuala O'Connor who used to be Nuala Ní Chonchúir until Penguin USA insisted on  'identity clarity' for Miss Emily - O'Connor's most successful novel. Her fourth novel will be out next year, and the collection, Joyride To Jupiter is her sixth collection of short stories, alongside four poetry books. I feel like writing Nuala Ní rather than Nuala O.

An Ovid quotation suggests a collection about the 'perjuries of lovers', but there is an 'occasional' feel about some of these stories. This book has been with me during the best summer ever and rarely was I disappointed. A few stories I had to reread to understand, but perhaps I was seduced by the language and the fresh, Irishness of her phrasing.

The title story, 'Joyride To Jupiter' surprised me and took me unawares. When I got to 'Futuretense', another story with a makeup or cosmetic theme, I went back and read both together, seeking a linking theme.

'SquidInky' about a tattooist was my favourite with its visual, descriptive style and a line "Spitting women and crowing hens will surely come to some bad ends", led into one of the loneliest passage in the story "My heart opens and closes like a mouth that wants to speak but can't form the words". Nuala O can form the words and can seesaw the human heart as in 'The Boy From Petropolis' and 'Napoli Abu'. Where the opening line is a catcher for a page turner "Fuck knows how I ended up agreeing to go to Naples with a spinster".

The shorter stories didn't satisfy me, but the last story 'Storks' caught the mood of a hidden past, a 'betrayal' that gets in the way of present happiness. The last page is as sensual a thrill as you could ask for "All will be well".'

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Next Saturday I am reading with Alan McMonagle, moderated by Catherine Dunne, at the inaugural Bray Literary Festival. 2pm, Bray Town Hall. More about the fest here.

And on Culture Night, this Friday, the artist collective I am a member of, Group 8, has the opening of its annual exhibition. This one is called Majesty in the Minute. 6.30pm, Ballinasloe Library. More at our blog here.

I had a great time in Cork at the Short Story Festival last weekend but am way, way to busy to blog it, sadly. My new novel (novel #5!) has joyfully taken over my head and my life, and I have a ton of other projects and things I'm involved in too. Busy is good. Too busy can be a bit of a headwreck. Onward!

TERRYGLASS ARTS FEST READING

I'm at TerryglassArts Festival on Friday 18th August, reading from #JoyridetoJupiter, 6pm, Riverrun. Free event!

RTÉ CULTURE REVIEWS JOYRIDE TO JUPITER

A wonderful review from Abigail Tuite at RTÉ Culture for Joyride to Jupiter:

Nuala O'Connor writes with a true and at times spell-binding voice, and each of her nineteen short stories is so self-contained it could be a novella. 

In Consolata, Helen brings her new love Matthew to visit her widowed mother Verona. Home rekindles memories of  Helen's girllhood and afternoons spent in a beautiful orchard belonging to neighbouring nuns. Against the backdrop of a blossoming love affair, there’s an exploration of grief and memory and a shocking revelation. With a brutal and sudden one-liner O’Connor exposes the skeleton in the closet. It’s a startling announcement and the reader is left reeling.

Elsewhere themes of  singledom, inheritance and childlessness are explored, lives and promises may be unfulfilled but they are not damned. O’Connor’s characters are complex, vibrant and pleasingly unpredictable.

Napoli Abú tells the tale of two lonely hearts, tossed together as frustrated travelling companions. "Partners in the pathetic," Tara is scathing of Beatrice and her allergies, her "miniscule lips", "the dour set to her face". But Beatrice is a dark horse, not as we or Tara expected. This is what O’Connor does best, demolishing our expectations - she is the housekeeper in Room 313 wanting to "catch people doing things that are the stuff of locked doors". Her characters have lived, loved and lost, and are grappling with the way of it.

The title story, Joyride to Jupiter defiantly probes dementia and the demands of old age. The terrors that we all face are bleakly laid bare, but with courage and acceptance. American Wake is a glance into the heartbreak of the emigrant of yesteryear, while Shut Your Mouth Hélène describes the similarly dispossessed shedding their baggage - literally - en route to the new world.

The wonderful brevity of Fish - a mere two pages - will put a smile on your face, it's a quirky, feel -good nod to the tyranny of middle age. This is no-holds-barred writing, capturing the vicissitudes and spontaneity of life, it is utterly heart-warming. "When you have seen your neighbour in the raw - and he has seen you seeing him - i t cannot be undone".

Some of the characters in the 154-page collection are flawed, disillusioned, marginalised, the sexual nun, the mistress, the childless woman, even 'Jesus of Dublin' is given a voice. But above all there’s hope. You’ll come away from this collection re-adjusting your perspective, refreshed and charmed.

Joyride to Jupiter is a tonic for the soul.

FINAL STOP VIRTUAL TOUR - GIVEAWAY!

Last stop on my virtual tour for #JoyridetoJupiter today and I'm at my friend, writer Shauna Gilligan's blog. Book and spacy purse giveaway! Go here.

JOYRIDE - VIRTUAL TOUR STOP #4

The incomparably shiny Claire Hennessy interviews me here on stop four of my virtual tour. We talk about my use of my birth name, stories vs novels and more.

'There was a shit-storm on Twitter when I reverted to my birth name, from a bunch of Irish writers whom I shall not identify. Betrayal of identity, blah-fucking-blah. These people don’t even know me; they’d be better off writing books rather than bitching about what I do, imo…'

JOYRIDE VIRTUAL TOUR - stop #3

My virtual tour continues with a fab review from Cathy Brown at 746 Books here.

'Joyride to Jupiter is a collection that shows a writer with complete mastery of her craft. The best of the stories hint rather than shout but all are poignant and complex, riding on the dichotomy between hope and despair. She is clear-eyed when exploring the dark realities of human behaviour, but the humour and wit displayed within her affecting prose allow this collection to soar.' Cathy Brown

IRISH INDO REVIEW OF *JOYRIDE*

Lovely review of Joyride to Jupiter in the Irish Independent today from Tanya Sweeney. Thanks so much to her.

EVENING ECHO REVIEW OF JOYRIDE TO JUPITER

GIVEAWAY WINNER!

The names went into the hat and the winner of the giveaway (book and Jupitery purse) is Fergal Lenehan. Congrats, Fergal!

ARENA - JOYRIDE TO JUPITER

I am on Arena tonight on RTE Radio 1 to talk about the book. 7pm on.

BIZ POST & SUN INDO REVIEWS - JOYRIDE TO JUPITER

Two reviews today for the book - another joint one with June Caldwell, from Anne Cunningham in the Sunday Independent. Glowing. A more muted one from Kevin Power in the Sunday Business Post. Interesting the way the laud/loathe thing happens with reviewers over the same story :)

Click and zoom to read.

JOYRIDE TO JUPITER - GALWAY LAUNCH

Galway launch of Joyride to Jupiter in Rosie McGurran's Studio and Gallery

Bloomsday, 16th June 2017

Artist Gavin Lavelle, who launched the book with artist Úna Spain

Artist Deborah Watkins, me, writer Lisa Carey

Finbar with Michael

Clementine Lavelle, Liam Carey Spalding, Juno and pal

My sons Cúán and Finn, with their Dad, John Dillon

Me with some of the crowd

Some of the crowd in Rosie's gallery

Rosie McGurran welcomes us

Post launch mingling in the kitchen

JOYRIDE TO JUPITER - DUBLIN LAUNCH PICS

The Dublin launch of Joyride to Jupiter in the Gutter Book Shop

14th June 2017

With Lia Mills who gave a wonderful speech

With daughter Juno

With my first publisher Alan Hayes and writer Patrick Chapman

With my brother Ronan O'Connor

John Foyle et moi

Writer Niall McArdle

Writer Adam Trodd

Writers Catherine Dunne & Tanya Sweeney

John Foyle, writer Doreen Finn & Gutter bookshop owner Bob Johnston

My editor at New Island Dan Bolger

Wrtier Monica McInerney

Writer Lauren Foley

GIVEAWAY - PUBLICATION DAY - JOYRIDE TO JUPITER

It's publication day for my new short story collection Joyride to Jupiter, whoop! It's already had two stellar reviews in The Sunday Times and Irish Times, and I have two launches this week, in Dublin the 14th and in Galway on Bloomsday, the 16th. ALL WELCOME for books, readings, wine, space-themed buns and chats!

To celebrate publication day I am giving away one copy of the book to a reader of this blog with a bonus gift of this cute little purse decorated with spacy joyriders to jupiter:

To enter, just leave a comment with your name (no anons, please) and a link to your blog, Twitter or Facebook, or your email address, so I can contact you if you win. I won't be chasing people to the ends of the earth (or Jupiter...) so please make yourself contactable when you enter :)

I will post to anywhere in the world. Draw will take place on Tuesday 20th June. Check back then to see if you've won and to send me your address. Good luck!

IRISH TIMES REVIEW - JOYRIDE TO JUPITER

Another cracker of a review for Joyride to Jupiter, this time from Houman Barekat in today's Irish Times. Delighted with it!
'This blending of wry, caustic irreverence and meditative poignancy is central to the success of O’Connor’s storytelling. The mix is just right: the internal monologues are exactly as long as they need to be; the humour is well-timed and effective. The dramatic moments, of which there are a fair few ... are rendered with unobtrusive deftness.' Meep!

Full text of the review:

Joyride to Jupiter review: a collection of skilfully crafted fictions

Houman Barekat

It is often said that smells can evoke memories more powerfully than sights or sounds. They crop up time and again in Nuala O’Connor’s short story collection, Joyride to Jupiter: the stench of fish guts on a quayside, the sour tang of hotel bedrooms, the soapy odour of an older couple’s bedroom, the mildewy pong of damp-ridden lodgings, the passing whiff of a familiar perfume. The protagonist of one story, Futuretense, writes marketing copy for fragrances. Her reflections on the suicide of her beloved brother, whose scent she helped him choose as a child, are interspersed with corny product blurbs, pointedly juxtaposing personal introspection with the vapid gibberish of commercial puff.

Many of these 19 stories – whose settings range from Dublin and obscure Co Mayo villages to Naples and the Copacabana – are concerned with loss or absence. Room 313 is about a Ukrainian cleaner who only gets to see her young daughter via Skype, while Squidinky tells of a tattooist grieving for her partner: “I am lonely, it’s true, but it’s more more that – I’m alone.” This melancholic timbre is animated by bursts of ironic wit and sprinklings of bawdy humour.

Affairs and infidelities abound. The narrator of Consolata catches her father having sex with a nun (“As I approached I heard a moist slap-slap . . .) and is compelled to keep quiet about it. In Mayo Oh Mayo, a young Irishwoman’s feelings for her American lover dissipate into indifferent contempt, concluding that “there is no getting to the bottom of the man because there are no depths to flounder in”. In Napoli Abú a jaded singleton speaks of her regret at having diminished the frisson of her affair with a married man by googling his wife.

O’Connor does a fine line in unsympathetic narrators who fire off withering put-downs with provocative insouciance. The narrator of The Donor, for example, describes a woman as having “a reality TV face; one of those faces that drips tears when her dough fails to prove, or her house mates vote her out”. Xavier, a sperm donor, is surreptitiously scoping out his biological son by befriending his mother.

At the start of this dubious undertaking he is flush with the optimism and misplaced paternal zeal, but his enthusiasm soon gives way to disappointment and disgust, to the point that the sight of the boy playing with his dog is described thus: “Ludo hunkered down and began to talk absolute shite to the mutt . . .” The narration here is in the third person, but it internalises Xavier’s perspective in a breezily scathing indirect speech.

In Tinnycross, a pair of estranged brothers squabble over their inheritance following the deaths of their parents. Revisiting his rural childhood home elicits, in one of them, a pang of nostalgia for “that precious, pellucid place of scant worldly pain”. He wonders: “Is it possible . . . to be in love with a field? . . . And if it is possible, is it wise?”

In the volume’s title story, the narrator’s dementia-stricken wife regresses to child-like capriciousness: she takes to wearing a tracksuit and buys a garish teeny eyeshadow called Joyride to Jupiter; when her daughter scoffs at this, she gives her a slap.

Both of these tales brim with wistful affection and human warmth. O’Connor moves seamlessly from this to a jovially sardonic portrait of coupledom in Penny and Leo Married Bliss, whose narrator has just trashed her errant boyfriend’s laptop in elaborate fashion (“I knew he was watching that auld porno and I was having none of it”) and is idly pining after the local priest: “God forgive me but I’d bounce up and down on Father Hugh Boylan all night, given a chance.”

This blending of wry, caustic irreverence and meditative poignancy is central to the success of O’Connor’s storytelling. The mix is just right: the internal monologues are exactly as long as they need to be; the humour is well-timed and effective. The dramatic moments, of which there are a fair few – including an illicit lesbian dalliance and the murder of a would-be paedophile by his wife – are rendered with unobtrusive deftness.

O’Connor’s fourth novel is due out in 2018; if these skilfully crafted fictions are anything to go by, it will be one to look out for.

TWO LAUNCHES FOR JOYRIDE TO JUPITER

DUBLIN:

GALWAY: New Island Books  requests the pleasure of your company to celebrate the Galway launch of  Joyride to Jupiter  by Nuala O'Connor   on Friday, June 16th at 7.00pm, in the Rosie McGurran Gallery and Studio, Roundstone, Galway. Guest speaker: Artist Gavin Lavelle  Please email info@newisland.ie or call 01 – 2784225 to RSVP. Praise for Nuala O'Connor ‘These stories - from a writer of immense talent - are a joy to read.' – Sinéad Gleeson 'A gifted and ambitious artist.' – Mike McCormack ‘Nuala O’Connor’s luminous prose has long been one of Ireland’s most treasured literary secrets’ – Dermot Bolger A heartbroken man deals with his wife’s Alzheimer’s as best he can. The Jesus of O’Connell Street reflects on his situation, which isn’t half bad. A too-young girl witnesses her father’s shocking infidelity. A quiet murder on a riverbank. Imperfect lovers and unlikely friends thwart and bolster each other as they act out their dramas on the beaches of Brazil, in the bedrooms of Dublin, and in the wilds of North America. With prose both lyrical and profound, the award-winning Nuala O’Connor writes of maternal love and cross-generational friendship but here, also, are stories of ageing, suicide, and the buoyancy of new love. In these urgent, humane stories of ill-advised couplings, loneliness and burgeoning hope, we find O’Connor’s trademark humour and sensuality, and the quest for longed-for truths. A truly stunning collection by one of Ireland’s finest writers.

Nuala O’Connor (AKA Nuala Ní Chonchúir) was born in Dublin and lives in East Galway. A novelist, short story writer and poet, she is the author of three novels, including Miss Emily(Penguin USA/Canada, Sandstone (UK)), about the poet Emily Dickinson and her Irish maid, five short story collections, and four collections of poetry. Miss Emily was shortlisted for the Novel of the Year award at the 2015 Irish Book Awards, and longlisted for the 2017 International DUBLIN Literary Award. Nuala’s fourth novel, Becoming Belle, is published in 2018.

SUNDAY TIMES REVIEW - JOYRIDE TO JUPITER

Louisa Carroll in The Sunday Times reviewed my book alongside June Caldwell's début short story collection today. Here is the full text of it below. I'm pleased as a dog with two pockets :)

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Love affair continues with the short story

Reviews by Louisa Carroll

June 4 2017, 12:00am, The Sunday Times

Joyride to Jupiter by Nuala O’ Connor New Island Press £9.99 pp180

Room Little Darker by June Caldwell New Island Press £9.99 pp220

If, as the writer Lorrie Moore claims, short stories are like love affairs while the novel is a marriage, then I’ll happily stay unattached. Being perfect for the phone readers and the pressed for time may explain the short story’s recent surge in popularity. However, as shown in two new collections, Joyride to Jupiter by Nuala O’Connor and Room Little Darker by June Caldwell, the short story also best reflects the intensity of contemporary life.

“With these moments of clarity we learn to value tiny things . . . that’s what I’m telling myself. We’re f*** all on the grand scale,” says the sadomasochistic slave narrator of Caldwell’s story Leitrim Flip. The characters in both collections share this ability to muse insightfully about the purpose of their own existence while simultaneously behaving in ways that contradict the insight. This calls to mind the title of Thomas Morris’ recent short-story collection We don’t know what we’re doing. As Caldwell’s slave continues: “I feel so mentally crazed so much of the time, I just want someone to take me in hand, to show me how to behave.”

O’Connor’s vivid characters are at least in the driving seat of life’s joyride, but seem far from in control. Those characters in Joyride to Jupiter who resist their own futility by using coping strategies such as repression, egotism and belligerence fare poorest. In the title story from the collection, the repercussions of elderly Mr. Halpin’s belief that he is “the worm” in his wife Teresa’s “dementia apple” costs him dearly, as does the blind egotism that leads Xavier in The Donor to decide on a whim to track down a young boy conceived through his sperm donation.

It is the characters that relinquish control in favour of acceptance who find momentary peace such as in O’Connor’s Girl Grief, in which a grandmother and her recently orphaned granddaughter surrender to the abyss of grief together. O’Connor’s language is clean and conscientious as well as poetic and lyrical, evident in the abstraction of Yellow. The collection exudes a quiet confidence and exercises the exemplary restraint of a seasoned writer who knows when to pull rather than push.

Caldwell’s high-octane Room Little Darker is the more freewheeling. From the outset her prose is a bombardment of sounds and images, like a boy racer’s car throbbing to its own dub-beat soundtrack. This is an unflinching collection which thuds with life and kicks with horror. It is miserably hilarious, taking in subjects as diverse as drug addiction, sadomasochism, homelessness, and even child robots designed for paedophiles in BoybotTM. Caldwell’s first collection is a mark maker, relentlessly demanding the reader to “take our modern horrors on the chin in the same way sewage is turned back into drinking water, axiomatically”.

Caldwell’s stories are underwritten by a deep assessment of the fallibility of the human condition. Upcycle is an affecting portrait of a family’s contradictory relationship to their abusive father’s dementia, and Cadaverus Moves is a loving warts-and-all depiction of a beloved brother’s death by cancer.

Both collections benefit by the other’s existence. O’Connor’s collection would be served by some of Caldwell’s fearlessness, and Caldwell by O’Connor’s informed subtlety of hand.

THE ANNAGHMAKERRIG AFTERS

Home from Annaghmakerrig. Real world re-entry is hard. No more fabulously tasty meals and decadent desserts, no more fresh scones and Scrabble, no more Eimear Quinn singing, no more buttercup and lake walks, no more lovely, funny convos with people of wit and wisdom.

The blow is softened, of course, by seeing my kiddies and husband, the cats and the canary, and opening some nice cava to celebrate my new book, which I got to hold for the first time today. Whoop!!

I also pressed send today, after finishing the final re-write on Becoming Belle, at Annaghmakerrig. So, mission accomplished. When the MS is off your hands, you expect major relief and giddy happiness. What you get is a muted 'Oh' from yourself and a minor ache because your beloved characters have flown.

Annaghmakerrig was the perfect mix of hard work and joyful companionship. I am now going to take two whole days off. I plan to read and walk and do little else. After that, it's the start of promo work on Joyride to Jupiter which, of course, I'm looking forward to hugely.

I hope you'll all join me at the launches for Joyride to Jupiter on the 14th and 16th of June, in Dublin and Galway respectively. Full details to follow.