Gratefully & Affectionately: Mary Lavin & The New Yorker

by Gráinne Hurley

320 pages, Hardcover

Published August 21, 2025

Reviews

[Nicola Pierce]

I read this in two sittings and thoroughly appreciated a fine insight into the writing life of Mary Lavin via her relationship with 'The New Yorker'. Most writers, I feel, would be both comforted and inspired by the amount of times her stories were rejected or had to be rewritten. Luckily for Lavin, she had a thick skin and ably accepted rejection without taking it personally. She was a grafter. Widowed with three young children, Lavin had to make her writing work financially and it is hard not to feel sorry for her being held hostage to literary fashions as conceived by the magazine's greatest editors, though ultimately she takes pride in writing what she wants to and damn the pay check. Lavin comes across as very down to earth and extremely likeable and this book left me wanting to read a fuller biography about her as her second marriage took me by surprise or maybe I just wasn't paying attention. Biographer Hurley writes very well and does not veer from her chosen subject: Lavin and her relationship with the American magazine via chief editor Rachel MacKenzie. Furthermore, there is a grand selection of photographs too. I now want to read Lavin's stories and am bewildered as to why I haven't read her before. This is a timely book about an important Irish writer who has been largely forgotten today.

[T P Kennedy]

Really enjoyed this. It's a peculiar topic - the relationship of an author and a magazine but it works really well. There's great insights here into Mary Lavin's life and personality and indeed the impact of cheques from the New Yorker. There's also some really interesting material on post war US and Irish literary life. Oddly for a work of biography/literary criticism it was a page turner.