Description
A collection of Irish short stories that rocks the soul. One negligent accident on a building site and a blacklist snares two young Irish lads new to London. The world of Irish dance enchants a father who goes all out for his girl. An old Irish man dies totally alone and Matt, his trippy bereavement officer, is cracking at the seams. Rites of passage for a new arrival on the drug-fuelled streets of south London. These stories catapult the reader in crazy directions.
Cusack’s stories engage with the forgotten, submerged and scattered voices from the waves of Irish diaspora. These are essential stories of our times on emigration, culture, derelict lifestyle, abuse, loneliness, recreational drug use and corruption – social issues that are tackled head-on, that engage and hit home, big time.
Laurie Cusack studied Creative Writing at Leicester University. He explores Irish diasporic issues from a working-class perspective. His dirty-realist sensibility comes from years of hitchhiking and roughing it, out on the road: picking grapes in France; hammering olive trees with a stick in Crete; harvesting dates high in the palm trees of Israel and working long hours in the flower bulb factories of Holland. His writing is visceral, comic and honest with disturbing undertones.
