Maeve Brennan

Following the death of her mother, twenty-two-year-old Anastasia King leaves Paris to return to Dublin. In the time that she has been away, her estranged father has died. On arriving to her family home, Anastasia is met by her paternal grandmother, who, filled with bitterness and spite, has determined never to forgive Anastasia for fleeing with her mother. As her days fill up with little humiliations, it becomes clear that, while Anastasia thinks she has come home to stay, for the vengeful Mrs King she is an unwelcome visitor. Written while Brennan was still in her twenties, this novella is a masterpiece of compression, a terse and haunting account of the personal and political factors that impinge on a young woman's freedom. Presented here with a new introduction by Lynne Tillman, The Visitor seals Maeve Brennan's reputation as one of the twentieth century's finest writers, and one of its most unflinching documentarians of the human heart.

In these delightful, melancholy prose sketches Maeve Brennan goes in pursuit of the ordinary, taking us on a tour of the cheap hotels, unassuming restaurants, and crowded streets of New York City. Brennan presents herself as the long-winded lady, solitary wanderer and wry observer of the human comedy. Whether she is riding the subway, failing to eat broccoli in a deserted restaurant, or watching lovers quarrel in Washington Square, Brennan manages to capture the wavering spectacle of the metropolis with an uncanny precision that makes these slight essays at once hallucinatory and hyperreal. Originally written for The New Yorker between 1954 and 1981 and presented here in full with a new introduction by Sinéad Gleeson, these pieces reveal Maeve Brennan to be one of the twentieth century’s most accomplished documentarians of city life, and one of its finest essayists.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1872.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1872.

In the stories that compose this scintillating collection, Maeve Brennan turns her anatomist's eye to the ugly feelings that teem just beneath the surface of family life - doing so, however, with an attention to detail that makes these unsparing portraits luminous and exquisite.

In 1919, the fledgling Irish State sent envoys out into the world to represent the Irish people and assert our independent voice. Since then, Irish diplomats and their families have been inspired to give creative voice to their experiences. The arts of diplomacy and of writing are close companions – both appreciate the importance of words and the necessity of imagination. For things to happen we must first imagine them; this holds true for peace as much as poetry. This volume comprises a selection of personal, creative and unofficial writing by Irish diplomats and their families. Part of the Department of Foreign Affairs centenary programme, the collection is a tribute to the creative power of language and the imaginative bonds that connect us. We are all strangers – here, there and everywhere – but wherever we go, we also find ourselves among friends. Between these pages, encounter a century of familiar names and new companions.

A work of fiction - novella set in Dublin.

The Philip Larkin I Knew traces the author's close friendship with the poet and stretches over his 30 year tenure of office as librarian of the University of Hull, taking in his literary achievements from "The Less Deceived" (1955), through "The Whitsun Weddings" (1964), to "High Windows" (1974). It reveals Larkin in a new light - courteous, compassionate, generous, and a man of deep sensitivity and charm - with a natural sense of fun and instinctive wit; in contrast to the gloomy and somewhat objectionable portrait that has emerged since his death.

This previously unpublished novella by the late Maeve Brennan is "an astonishing miniature masterpiece. [It] will stay with the reader forever."-Nuala O'Faolain. Maeve Brennan has been called one of the best Irish writers of stories since Joyce, and with The Visitor her oeuvre is immeasurably deepened and broadened. Written in the mid-1940s, it is a story of Dublin and of the unkind, ungenerous, emotionally distant side of the Irish temper. This haunting novella stands with her greatest short stories.

Reading Maeve Brennan is like watching a master jeweler construct a ticking watch from an array of tiny, inanimate parts. -Linda Barrett Osborne, New York Times Book ReviewSo good that I kept putting the book down to savor a description or perfect phrase, to hug myself with malicious joy, and to put off the evil hour when the stories would be done. -Katherine A. Powers, Boston Sunday GlobeWhen The Springs of Affection was published in 1997, the poet Eamon Grennan called it a classic, a book that placed Maeve Brennan among the best Irish short-story writers since Joyce. The Rose Garden gathers the rest of her short fiction, some of it set in her native Dublin but most of it in and around her adopted Manhattan. The riches here are many, but the collection's centerpiece is a suite of satirical scenes from suburban life, stories a little meaner than Cheever's, and wittier than Updike's (Los Angeles Times Book Review).