The Man Who Dreamt of Lobsters: Stories [Hardcover]

In this first story collection, Collins, Irish-born and distantly related to the Irish revolutionary who is his namesake, charts out new territory for the discussion of age-old problems. His perspective on life in Ireland is that of disaffected youth who are tired of political strife, the romanticization of bankrupt ways and the abdication of the fathers, who have left the children no legacy but violence and an oppressive church. In "First Love," kids left in a car in a pub parking lot are horrified as their fathers' dogs tear at the dead rabbits that have been bagged earlier in the day, the fathers oblivious over their pints. In "The Butcher's Daughter" a pregnant young woman sits in a pub with a doll in a pram as the place fills with soldiers, the workings of a violent cataclysm ticking away in the doll's belly. And in "The Whore Mother," Collins crafts a tale that is both quintessentially Irish (a brewery worker drowns in a vat of Guinness) and wickedly subversive (his impoverished widow, who in the absence of decent death benefits has taken up prostitution, is meted out the most terrible kind of justice). Collins's gift is his ability to find intricate metaphors to describe lives so grim that only anger lights the way.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this collection of eight stories of modern Ireland, the author draws on his country's rich legacy to reveal the cultural myths, romantic illusions, and sentimentalism that handicap his characters, who are caught up in Ireland's ongoing social turmoil. These are stories of economic survival, gaming and drinking, coming of age, the struggle in the North, and family life. The young IRA gunman in "The Meat Eaters," who anticipates a hero's welcome in New York, is as naive as the young girl in "First Love" who thinks babies grow in cabbage patches. In "The Butcher's Daughter," a young widow, with bomb in baby buggy, treats us to a grim, hilarious interior monolog. The final story, "Sickness," employs a Joycean stream-of-consciousness technique in portraying an old fisherman tormented by grotesque dreams of vengeful lobster-monsters. These are all first-rate stories--strong, richly detailed, biting yet compassionate--by an author who knows how to create suspense. Collins (fiction writing, Univ. of Chicago) is the grandson of Irish patriot Michael Collins. Highly recommended for literary collections in academic and public libraries.
- Lesley Jorbin, Cleveland State Univ. Lib.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Collins, a native of Limerick and teaching fellow at the University of Chicago, offers eight gritty, violent tales of the Irish in his first story collection. In ``The Butcher's Daughter,'' a young pregnant woman mourns the death of her rebel boyfriend moments before setting off a bomb in a bar full of British soldiers; in ``The Meateaters,'' a scared 19-year-old Irish political refugee is murdered by the Irish- Americans he believed would rescue him; in ``First Love,'' the children of a drunken Irishman start a bloody revolution while he's locked in his car during a drinking spree. Collins's stories share a sense of Ireland's darker passions and its natives' fiery involvement with Catholicism, alcohol, violence, and revolution; and if the plots occasionally turn convoluted (as in ``The Whore Mother,'' about a young widow's furtive actions in her Dublin neighborhood) or veer into melodrama (as in ``The Sunday Races,'' in which a young runner is beaten by his mentor when his leg refuses to function, and in ``Sickness,'' in which a family patriarch attempts to abuse his ``idiot'' grandson sexually), the twisted road is in most cases a fascinating one. Collins' heroes are hardly pure--few stories pack as much blood, hatred, and dissolution as these--but they may, in the end, be innocent. An intriguing debut. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Nine powerful, merciless, and perceptive stories of Ireland and the Irish journey beyond the sentimental myths to explore the grimmer realities of Irish life, in a collection that includes ""The Meateaters"" and ""The Butcher's Daughter."" A first collection.