- Published: 14 November 2013
- ISBN: 9781448113484
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 640
Collected Stories
- Published: 14 November 2013
- ISBN: 9781448113484
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 640
MacLaverty is one of the best practitioners of the genre we have.
New Statesman
His prose is invisible, free of tricks, as though it was your own thoughts.
Observer
Beautifully constructed, minutely observed, filled with the poetry of longing, told with an economy and simplicity which makes their small tragedies even more powerful and moving… MacLaverty has created an imagined Ulster which can stand side by side with Joyce's Dublin. Long may he continue.
Guardian
MacLaverty has a knack for endowing the workaday with a little poetry.
Independent
MacLaverty's jaunty, light prose just skips over it all: here a turn of phrase, there a modest observation that lays a whole scene open. The effect is, as one of the characters says, "beyond rubies''.
Daily Telegraph
MacLaverty is an exhilarating, tender, humorous writer… who can set a scene and create a character with Chekhovian delicacy and economy.
Sunday Telegraph
Expert, elegant, mature and passionate.
Scotsman
Not since J.D. Salinger's For Esme With Love and Squalor have I enjoyed so much a collection of stories. I mean pleasure – real pleasure.
Paul Durcan, The Cork Examiner
Compelling tales of family dramas in troubled times.
Herald
Characters all but leap off the page with believability in these marvellous stories of life (and death) in Belfast. Funny...and forlorn, they are triumphs of exactness – Joyce and Chekhov come to mind – in which time, place and personality are caught with unshowy authority and not a word seems wasted.
Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times
Bitter-sweetness is the mood of many of these stories. MacLaverty is a generous and sympathetic writer, one who is capable of celebrating joy and happiness, while remaining aware that life often brings more disappointments than rewards.
Scotsman (Web)
A masterpiece of wit and elegance.
Elspeth Barker, Literary Review
The author charts the various stages of life with engaging curiosity and earthy compassion... The publishers, Jonathan Cape, have done a fine job with this handsome and substantial collection.
Keith Hopper, Times Literary Supplement