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There are Little Kingdoms: Stories
This award-winning story collection by Kevin Barry summons all the laughter, darkness, and intensity of contemporary Irish life. A pair of fast girls court trouble as they cool their heels on a slow night in a small town. Lonesome hillwalkers take to the high reaches in pursuit of a saving embrace. A bewildered man steps off a country bus in search of his identity—and a stiff drink. These stories, filled with a grand sense of life's absurdity, form a remarkably surefooted collection that reads like a modern-day Dubliners.
Atlantic City
To the hills
See the tree, how big it's grown
Animal needs
Last days of the buffalo
Ideal homes
The wintersongs
Party at Helen's
Breakfast wine
Burn the bad lamp
There are little kingdoms
Nights at the gin place
The penguins
Atlantic City
To the hills
See the tree, how big it's grown
Animal needs
Last days of the buffalo
Ideal homes
The wintersongs
Party at Helen's
Breakfast wine
Burn the bad lamp
There are little kingdoms
Nights at the gin place
The penguins
154 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2007
About the author
Kevin Barry
78 books1,269 followersKevin Barry is an Irish writer. He is the author of two collections of short stories, and the novel City of Bohane, which was the winner of the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 165 reviews
February 16, 2020
This is where it all began for Kevin Barry, a blistering short story collection that announced the arrival of a major literary talent. There are Little Kingdoms was first published in 2007 and I can only imagine the excitement it caused on the Irish scene.
Barry's trademark humour is already on display here and the antics of these characters often made me laugh out loud. To The Hills is a hilarious account of a love triangle that arises between three middle aged hill-walkers, each desperate for a night of romance. Animal Needs follows the trials and tribulations of a lustful chicken farmer, whose extra-marital affairs threaten his wellbeing as he prepares for a vital farm inspection. But there is also an underlying melancholy to many of these tales, hints of guilt at past misdeeds and regret at lives unlived. You get the impression that some of the characters are only smiling to keep a dangerous sadness at bay.
It's rare that I love every single entry in a book of short stories, and a couple of these didn't really work for me, such as the enigmatic title tale. But on the whole it's a hugely entertaining affair - full of wit, flair and unbridled imagination. Barry has been described as the best Irish short story writer of his generation and on this evidence, I find it hard to disagree.
Some of my favourite passages:
"Meadowsweet Farm is perhaps not the place you have prepared for. There is no waft of harvest to perfume the air. There is no contented lowing from the fields. These are not happy acres. Meadowsweet Farm is put together out of breeze blocks, barbed wire and galvanised tin. The land is flat and featureless. There are sawn-off barrels filled with rancid rainwater. A snapped cable cracks like a whip and lifts sparks from a dismal concrete yard - the electrics are haywire. The septic tank is backed up. The poultry shed is the secret torture facility of a Third World regime, long rumoured by shivering peasants in the mountain night. Desperation reigns, and we hear it as a croaky bayou howl. There is a general sensation of slurry."
"Two words were enough to give it away as a Clare accent, far and somehow accusatory, an accent he didn't approve of, normally, but she was good-looking enough to get away with it. His accent was from further north, and a shade east, pure Roscommon. It was designed for roaring over chainsaws and horsing out ballads to the fallen martyrs of Irish republicanism but he had honed it, somehow, to a hoarse-sounding, late-night cool."
"Mr Kelliher attended to the stout. Each fresh glass he filled two sevenths shy of the brim, with the glass delicately inclined towards the pourer's breast, so as the stout would not injure itself with a sheer fall, and he set them then, and there was the rush and mingle of brown and cream notes, and the blackness rising, a magic show you would never tire of."
"We nodded, the three men, sombre as owls. We nodded as though the cruel variables of love were hardly news to us. We nodded as though we'd each known heartbreak and the ache of a lost love, as though we'd each walked the Castle Walk, at four in the morning in cold rain, with the collars turned up against a lonely wind. Oh what we wouldn't have given for broken hearts."
Barry's trademark humour is already on display here and the antics of these characters often made me laugh out loud. To The Hills is a hilarious account of a love triangle that arises between three middle aged hill-walkers, each desperate for a night of romance. Animal Needs follows the trials and tribulations of a lustful chicken farmer, whose extra-marital affairs threaten his wellbeing as he prepares for a vital farm inspection. But there is also an underlying melancholy to many of these tales, hints of guilt at past misdeeds and regret at lives unlived. You get the impression that some of the characters are only smiling to keep a dangerous sadness at bay.
It's rare that I love every single entry in a book of short stories, and a couple of these didn't really work for me, such as the enigmatic title tale. But on the whole it's a hugely entertaining affair - full of wit, flair and unbridled imagination. Barry has been described as the best Irish short story writer of his generation and on this evidence, I find it hard to disagree.
Some of my favourite passages:
"Meadowsweet Farm is perhaps not the place you have prepared for. There is no waft of harvest to perfume the air. There is no contented lowing from the fields. These are not happy acres. Meadowsweet Farm is put together out of breeze blocks, barbed wire and galvanised tin. The land is flat and featureless. There are sawn-off barrels filled with rancid rainwater. A snapped cable cracks like a whip and lifts sparks from a dismal concrete yard - the electrics are haywire. The septic tank is backed up. The poultry shed is the secret torture facility of a Third World regime, long rumoured by shivering peasants in the mountain night. Desperation reigns, and we hear it as a croaky bayou howl. There is a general sensation of slurry."
"Two words were enough to give it away as a Clare accent, far and somehow accusatory, an accent he didn't approve of, normally, but she was good-looking enough to get away with it. His accent was from further north, and a shade east, pure Roscommon. It was designed for roaring over chainsaws and horsing out ballads to the fallen martyrs of Irish republicanism but he had honed it, somehow, to a hoarse-sounding, late-night cool."
"Mr Kelliher attended to the stout. Each fresh glass he filled two sevenths shy of the brim, with the glass delicately inclined towards the pourer's breast, so as the stout would not injure itself with a sheer fall, and he set them then, and there was the rush and mingle of brown and cream notes, and the blackness rising, a magic show you would never tire of."
"We nodded, the three men, sombre as owls. We nodded as though the cruel variables of love were hardly news to us. We nodded as though we'd each known heartbreak and the ache of a lost love, as though we'd each walked the Castle Walk, at four in the morning in cold rain, with the collars turned up against a lonely wind. Oh what we wouldn't have given for broken hearts."
September 7, 2026
5★
"Just then, the air changed: a small troop of girls arrived in, a battalion of three. They had vinegar in them and they roved their dangerous eyes around the habituees and they were a carnival of cheap perfume on young skin and whatever summer was they’d trapped its essence and fizzed with it."
I do love hearing Kevin Barry's Irish, only on the page, that is - no audio. Not all the stories are written with a particular lilt or accent, but he sure does know how to portray it in writing. His characters are kind of like the girls above who trap the essence and fizz with it.
I don't really want to comment on particular stories, only to say how much they differ from each other but have the same appeal for me. His descriptive phrases and meanderings are the kind of thing you want to read aloud to someone.
From Atlantic City:
" A July evening, after a tar-melter of a day…"
. . .
"Not fat so much as massive, the width of a small van across the shoulders, and he moved noiselessly, as though on castors, and the flesh swung and rolled with him, there was no little grace to it, and he considered the breathless, blushing youngster who’d achieved a new hi-score on Atlantic City, and he considered the score, and he said: ‘Handy. Handy alright.'"
. . .
This next one could have been my husband.
"Moloney sat in his kiosk, on the forecourt of the garage, by the pumps, and he cursed the championship reports in the weekly paper. The lying bastards hadn’t seen the same match he’d seen. They were making excuses for the county side."
. . .
From To The Hills:
"He had furious eyebrows perched up top of a dismal nose. He wore a helmet of sandy, wiry hair. He was the guts of six foot."
From See The Tree, How Big It's Grown
A man who's lost his memory finds himself on a bus.
"He turned to check his reflection in the window of the Expressway bus and some old quarehawk turned to look back at him. He appeared to be a man of about fifty. He did not appear to have set the world on fire… He took a glance south and found he was wearing an anorak long past its day, a pair of jeans with diesel stains caked into them and shoes straight off an evidence table."
. . .
From Party At Helen's:
"He lived in a bedsit there the size of a shoebox. He could make tea and toast without getting out of the bed."
. . .
"She sensed something about him. When he looked at you, handsome and sharp-featured though he was, you got the feeling that comes after you’ve chewed a mouthful and you just know that the chicken is dodgy."
Doesn't that describe exactly the feeling? Eww.
There is occasionally something a bit out of the ordinary, a bit inexplicable, possibly a bit fanciful, but just enough to make it interesting. I mean, he's Irish, right? The Irish have magic at their core.
A blatant example, though, is a man who loves polishing the interesting old things he sells, and when he comes to an oil lamp he's recently been given - a genie appears, of course.
From Burn The Bad Lamp:
"here are no tapered slippers nor flowing silks. He wears no turban, nor fathomless expression. He wears a pair of troubled chinos, an overcoat with fag burns on its lapels, a pair of scuffed Nikes and a leery, self-satisfied smirk. He’s one of those small butty fellas, fortyish, thinning up top, and the bit of hair that’s left could usefully be introduced to a bottle of Head ‘n’ Shoulders.
‘How’d you like this for caper?’ he says.
‘Listen,’ says Ralph. ‘I can’t be dealing with this kind of messin’. I’m on tablets, like.’
‘Relax,’ says the genie. ‘Just try and calm yourself, okay? The last thing we want is you on the flat of your back outside in the Regional. Have a sit down, Mr Coughlan. Take it easy.’"
Then there's the The Wintersongs, from which I've picked a few bits to give a sense of the flow of action as a girl tries to ignore the old woman on the train who goes on and on and on (replaced by ellipses below) but whose patter (without quotation marks) becomes increasingly compelling. The punctuation means something.
"The train pulled into a country station and they piled on board with country groans and country winces.
. . .
The girl made a broad mime of adjusting her iPod, and she assumed a dead-eyed glaze, but the old woman smiled, shuffled to rearrange her bony buttocks for comfort, entwined her thin fingers and clasped them about her middle, then rotated one thumb slowly around the other.
. . .
The girl took out a book and made a display of it. She peeled a clementine and looked to the passing skies. She tried to put a fence up, but the old one was a talker.
. . .
And by the way, would you mind taking that thing out of your ears while I’m talking to you? The light was scratched,
. . .
Let’s see what we’ve got, she said. The eyes are outside your head, so you were up at a dirty hour yourself. You got dressed in the dark, didn’t you? Yes, with a big brazen head, very sure of yourself. The case was packed since last night, you did it on the sly. You had it hid under the stairs. You went down the stairs and got the case and you opened the front door, very quiet, and you stepped out into the street. It’s a terrace of houses, isn’t it? Familiar as your own face but unreal at that hour: parked cars, frost, moon, not a cat on the road. You pulled the door out after you. You could hardly breathe."
While the old woman's persistence is at first amusing, as the story winds up, it becomes increasingly poignant. I think the author had reasons for omitting quotation marks for her.
Kevin Barry is such a good writer. I loved his Night Boat to Tangier and The Heart in Winter, and now this. I couldn't possibly spoil these stories with the excerpts. I hope you might like to see the rest.
My review of Night Boat to Tangier
My review of The Heart in Winter
"Just then, the air changed: a small troop of girls arrived in, a battalion of three. They had vinegar in them and they roved their dangerous eyes around the habituees and they were a carnival of cheap perfume on young skin and whatever summer was they’d trapped its essence and fizzed with it."
I do love hearing Kevin Barry's Irish, only on the page, that is - no audio. Not all the stories are written with a particular lilt or accent, but he sure does know how to portray it in writing. His characters are kind of like the girls above who trap the essence and fizz with it.
I don't really want to comment on particular stories, only to say how much they differ from each other but have the same appeal for me. His descriptive phrases and meanderings are the kind of thing you want to read aloud to someone.
From Atlantic City:
" A July evening, after a tar-melter of a day…"
. . .
"Not fat so much as massive, the width of a small van across the shoulders, and he moved noiselessly, as though on castors, and the flesh swung and rolled with him, there was no little grace to it, and he considered the breathless, blushing youngster who’d achieved a new hi-score on Atlantic City, and he considered the score, and he said: ‘Handy. Handy alright.'"
. . .
This next one could have been my husband.
"Moloney sat in his kiosk, on the forecourt of the garage, by the pumps, and he cursed the championship reports in the weekly paper. The lying bastards hadn’t seen the same match he’d seen. They were making excuses for the county side."
. . .
From To The Hills:
"He had furious eyebrows perched up top of a dismal nose. He wore a helmet of sandy, wiry hair. He was the guts of six foot."
From See The Tree, How Big It's Grown
A man who's lost his memory finds himself on a bus.
"He turned to check his reflection in the window of the Expressway bus and some old quarehawk turned to look back at him. He appeared to be a man of about fifty. He did not appear to have set the world on fire… He took a glance south and found he was wearing an anorak long past its day, a pair of jeans with diesel stains caked into them and shoes straight off an evidence table."
. . .
From Party At Helen's:
"He lived in a bedsit there the size of a shoebox. He could make tea and toast without getting out of the bed."
. . .
"She sensed something about him. When he looked at you, handsome and sharp-featured though he was, you got the feeling that comes after you’ve chewed a mouthful and you just know that the chicken is dodgy."
Doesn't that describe exactly the feeling? Eww.
There is occasionally something a bit out of the ordinary, a bit inexplicable, possibly a bit fanciful, but just enough to make it interesting. I mean, he's Irish, right? The Irish have magic at their core.
A blatant example, though, is a man who loves polishing the interesting old things he sells, and when he comes to an oil lamp he's recently been given - a genie appears, of course.
From Burn The Bad Lamp:
"here are no tapered slippers nor flowing silks. He wears no turban, nor fathomless expression. He wears a pair of troubled chinos, an overcoat with fag burns on its lapels, a pair of scuffed Nikes and a leery, self-satisfied smirk. He’s one of those small butty fellas, fortyish, thinning up top, and the bit of hair that’s left could usefully be introduced to a bottle of Head ‘n’ Shoulders.
‘How’d you like this for caper?’ he says.
‘Listen,’ says Ralph. ‘I can’t be dealing with this kind of messin’. I’m on tablets, like.’
‘Relax,’ says the genie. ‘Just try and calm yourself, okay? The last thing we want is you on the flat of your back outside in the Regional. Have a sit down, Mr Coughlan. Take it easy.’"
Then there's the The Wintersongs, from which I've picked a few bits to give a sense of the flow of action as a girl tries to ignore the old woman on the train who goes on and on and on (replaced by ellipses below) but whose patter (without quotation marks) becomes increasingly compelling. The punctuation means something.
"The train pulled into a country station and they piled on board with country groans and country winces.
. . .
The girl made a broad mime of adjusting her iPod, and she assumed a dead-eyed glaze, but the old woman smiled, shuffled to rearrange her bony buttocks for comfort, entwined her thin fingers and clasped them about her middle, then rotated one thumb slowly around the other.
. . .
The girl took out a book and made a display of it. She peeled a clementine and looked to the passing skies. She tried to put a fence up, but the old one was a talker.
. . .
And by the way, would you mind taking that thing out of your ears while I’m talking to you? The light was scratched,
. . .
Let’s see what we’ve got, she said. The eyes are outside your head, so you were up at a dirty hour yourself. You got dressed in the dark, didn’t you? Yes, with a big brazen head, very sure of yourself. The case was packed since last night, you did it on the sly. You had it hid under the stairs. You went down the stairs and got the case and you opened the front door, very quiet, and you stepped out into the street. It’s a terrace of houses, isn’t it? Familiar as your own face but unreal at that hour: parked cars, frost, moon, not a cat on the road. You pulled the door out after you. You could hardly breathe."
While the old woman's persistence is at first amusing, as the story winds up, it becomes increasingly poignant. I think the author had reasons for omitting quotation marks for her.
Kevin Barry is such a good writer. I loved his Night Boat to Tangier and The Heart in Winter, and now this. I couldn't possibly spoil these stories with the excerpts. I hope you might like to see the rest.
My review of Night Boat to Tangier
My review of The Heart in Winter
January 8, 2018
These stories are little artworks. You need to read them slowly, closely, as the author has chosen his words very precisely. It is not the action that drives the narrative, but the descriptions.
’Atlantic City’ is a kind of example of what life in a small countryside village is like for its youth, and also how it will develop, generation after generation without fundamental change. Well told, with some flashes of genius, for example when the girls enter the boys’ arcade: „They had vinegar in them and they roved their dangerous eyes around the habituees and they were a carnival of cheap perfume on young skin ...”. But James, the leader of the pack, has the better of them: „His hungry gaze asked severe questions of their confidence...” until later on „Though the girls had become shyer, shyness can fold in on itself and be transformed on a summer night: when there is possibility in the air, shyness can say what the hell and trade itself for a brazenness.”
’To the hills’ is a story of inevitable loneliness at middle age, when this has even seemed to become preferable to a relation. It is the fate of certain peoples’ lives. Unforgettable are the lines „... the slow hours of the afternoon yawned and presented themselves with a certain belligerence. Those who go mad go mad first in the afternoons.” And how about the humor in naming the guesthouse the St Ignatius of Loyola B&B?
’See The Tree’ is a bit weird, as it remains unsaid what happened to the main character before he lost all memories. There are some hints, that’s all. Meaning of the title? Amusing story nonetheless.
’Animal Needs’ is the opposite, elaborate and explicit, with the exception of the daughter maybe who only makes an appearance in the last paragraph. Magnificent description of the desolation of (Trump?) country life, where even gods get depressed: „There are crisis levels of debt. There is alcoholism and garrulousness and depressive ideation. There is the great disease of familiarity. These are long, bruised days on the midland plain. People wake in the night and shout out names they have never known. ... There is addiction to prescription medications and catalogue shopping. Boys with pesticide eyes pull handbrake turns at four in the morning and scream the names of dark angels. Everybody is fucking everybody else.”
’Last Days of the Buffalo’ is a short sketch of another soul lost in life. „... it happens sometimes is that pain becomes a feed for courage, a nutrient for it: when pain drips steadily, it can embolden.” The main character has a trait in common with some of the ones of the other stories: he needs routine to stay (mentally) sane. „He has before him the consolations of routine.”
’Ideal Homes’ is a funny story about two rebellious female adolescents in yet another deadly boring village. The blind shopkeeper who needs the client to tell him what they chose to buy „...is as close the village got to an attraction.” The girls steal from the shopkeeper of course and roam around the village to annoy as many people as they can.
’The Wintersongs’ observes the (non)reaction of a young girl to a chatty half mad lady seated opposite of her in the train. As in an earlier story (the daughter in Animal Needs) the main character is the one that does not say a word. The author concludes (with regret?) that „She doesn’t know that every step from now on will change her. She is so open, so fluid. Every conversation will change her, every chance meeting, every walk down the street.”
’Party at Helen’s’ is a kind of relay in which the story is taken over by a new character (all youngsters) if he or she meets the current narrator at the party where the story is located. This presents Barry to display one of his major skills: very concise character description. „She was born to middle age, and a lascivous one: all solace was in the senses.” „She was intuitive: she had an idea of the vast adult dullness that loomed around the next turn.
’Breakfast Wine’ is my favourite. It is only a description of a bar scene but done with exquisite detail. Every word in this story is right on the dot. „The clock considered twelve and passed it by with a soft shudder, as though it had been a close call.” „... the dread of the morning had lifted, we passed the hour of remorse, and we marched to the mellow afternoon.” „... the days were slow in The Northern Star, and the nights were only trotting after them.” „We nodded, the three men, sombre as owls. We nodded as though the cruel variables of love were hardly news to us. ... Oh what we wouldn’t have given for broken hearts.” This story is a real gem of the genre.
’Burn the bad lamp’ is again about a desillusioned midle aged man with psychological problems. He is constant on the alert for dangerous mood swings which he tries to check with tried homemade simple methods. „He knows that ’perceived slights’ is one of the key danger signs...” Surprisingly enough, the story develops in a kind of fairytale, unlike all the other stories.
The title story starts off with a magnificent first paragraph: just read it! The narrator has a range of surreal experiences and it is left to the reader to judge what causes them. Psychological conditions, drugs, drinking?
’Nights at the Gin Palace’ is a rather hilarious story about an old resigned father and a manic, hysterical daughter who has failed in everything she has tried in life. Now she wants to start a hotel. „She had some handsomeness still but it was turning into something else. She had moved from city to city, and from town to town, propelled by a talent for hopeless optimism.”
’The Penguins’ is hilarious as well, relating the survival of airplane passengers that landed in uninhabited territory. „My husband is like on of those second-hand books you buy that’s got all the wrong bits underlined.” The funny thing is that a few of the passengers are characters from the earlier stories.
’Atlantic City’ is a kind of example of what life in a small countryside village is like for its youth, and also how it will develop, generation after generation without fundamental change. Well told, with some flashes of genius, for example when the girls enter the boys’ arcade: „They had vinegar in them and they roved their dangerous eyes around the habituees and they were a carnival of cheap perfume on young skin ...”. But James, the leader of the pack, has the better of them: „His hungry gaze asked severe questions of their confidence...” until later on „Though the girls had become shyer, shyness can fold in on itself and be transformed on a summer night: when there is possibility in the air, shyness can say what the hell and trade itself for a brazenness.”
’To the hills’ is a story of inevitable loneliness at middle age, when this has even seemed to become preferable to a relation. It is the fate of certain peoples’ lives. Unforgettable are the lines „... the slow hours of the afternoon yawned and presented themselves with a certain belligerence. Those who go mad go mad first in the afternoons.” And how about the humor in naming the guesthouse the St Ignatius of Loyola B&B?
’See The Tree’ is a bit weird, as it remains unsaid what happened to the main character before he lost all memories. There are some hints, that’s all. Meaning of the title? Amusing story nonetheless.
’Animal Needs’ is the opposite, elaborate and explicit, with the exception of the daughter maybe who only makes an appearance in the last paragraph. Magnificent description of the desolation of (Trump?) country life, where even gods get depressed: „There are crisis levels of debt. There is alcoholism and garrulousness and depressive ideation. There is the great disease of familiarity. These are long, bruised days on the midland plain. People wake in the night and shout out names they have never known. ... There is addiction to prescription medications and catalogue shopping. Boys with pesticide eyes pull handbrake turns at four in the morning and scream the names of dark angels. Everybody is fucking everybody else.”
’Last Days of the Buffalo’ is a short sketch of another soul lost in life. „... it happens sometimes is that pain becomes a feed for courage, a nutrient for it: when pain drips steadily, it can embolden.” The main character has a trait in common with some of the ones of the other stories: he needs routine to stay (mentally) sane. „He has before him the consolations of routine.”
’Ideal Homes’ is a funny story about two rebellious female adolescents in yet another deadly boring village. The blind shopkeeper who needs the client to tell him what they chose to buy „...is as close the village got to an attraction.” The girls steal from the shopkeeper of course and roam around the village to annoy as many people as they can.
’The Wintersongs’ observes the (non)reaction of a young girl to a chatty half mad lady seated opposite of her in the train. As in an earlier story (the daughter in Animal Needs) the main character is the one that does not say a word. The author concludes (with regret?) that „She doesn’t know that every step from now on will change her. She is so open, so fluid. Every conversation will change her, every chance meeting, every walk down the street.”
’Party at Helen’s’ is a kind of relay in which the story is taken over by a new character (all youngsters) if he or she meets the current narrator at the party where the story is located. This presents Barry to display one of his major skills: very concise character description. „She was born to middle age, and a lascivous one: all solace was in the senses.” „She was intuitive: she had an idea of the vast adult dullness that loomed around the next turn.
’Breakfast Wine’ is my favourite. It is only a description of a bar scene but done with exquisite detail. Every word in this story is right on the dot. „The clock considered twelve and passed it by with a soft shudder, as though it had been a close call.” „... the dread of the morning had lifted, we passed the hour of remorse, and we marched to the mellow afternoon.” „... the days were slow in The Northern Star, and the nights were only trotting after them.” „We nodded, the three men, sombre as owls. We nodded as though the cruel variables of love were hardly news to us. ... Oh what we wouldn’t have given for broken hearts.” This story is a real gem of the genre.
’Burn the bad lamp’ is again about a desillusioned midle aged man with psychological problems. He is constant on the alert for dangerous mood swings which he tries to check with tried homemade simple methods. „He knows that ’perceived slights’ is one of the key danger signs...” Surprisingly enough, the story develops in a kind of fairytale, unlike all the other stories.
The title story starts off with a magnificent first paragraph: just read it! The narrator has a range of surreal experiences and it is left to the reader to judge what causes them. Psychological conditions, drugs, drinking?
’Nights at the Gin Palace’ is a rather hilarious story about an old resigned father and a manic, hysterical daughter who has failed in everything she has tried in life. Now she wants to start a hotel. „She had some handsomeness still but it was turning into something else. She had moved from city to city, and from town to town, propelled by a talent for hopeless optimism.”
’The Penguins’ is hilarious as well, relating the survival of airplane passengers that landed in uninhabited territory. „My husband is like on of those second-hand books you buy that’s got all the wrong bits underlined.” The funny thing is that a few of the passengers are characters from the earlier stories.
December 14, 2018
4.5. Some of the stories - See The Tree, How Big It’s Grown is maybe the best - are mini-masterpieces of bleak, maundering wit. Martin McDonagh would surely approve.
November 18, 2019
Barry's 2007 debut collection shows that his talent and creativity were there from the start. Many of these stories mix the banal and the slightly surreal, they are always engaging and at times elliptical. All very enjoyable.
June 26, 2020
Kevin Barry must love the sound of the spoken word, and the thirteen short stories in his There Are Little Kingdoms read as if Barry intended them to be read aloud. Barry writes beautifully rich English, redolent with character and accent and localisms.
Listen, she said. I have news for you. Brace yourself, child, ‘cause here it comes. There is no such thing as forgiveness. Everything has a consequence. Would you believe that? Years later, you’ll still have to answer the question: was the right thing done?” (p. 80)
”I descended the ladder to an autumn garden. Russets and golds and a bled, cool sky: turtleneck weather. My favourite time, the season of loss and devotion.” (p. 128)
Although I was entranced by his Dublin Literary Award winning City of Bohane, I prefer his fiction that sticks to the here and now. Of course in Barry's fiction, the here and now sometimes wanders forward and backwards into the then and there, between the world as those with earthbound imaginations experience it and the world as those with more expansive imaginations experience it.
There Are Little Kingdoms includes some stunners: “Atlantic City”, “To the Hills”, “See the Tree, How Big It’s Grown”, “Animal Needs”, “Last Days of the Buffalo”, “The Wintersongs”, “Breakfast Wine”, “Nights At the Gin Palace”. A few disappointed, but not many. All in all, a wonderful collection. 4.5 stars
Listen, she said. I have news for you. Brace yourself, child, ‘cause here it comes. There is no such thing as forgiveness. Everything has a consequence. Would you believe that? Years later, you’ll still have to answer the question: was the right thing done?” (p. 80)
”I descended the ladder to an autumn garden. Russets and golds and a bled, cool sky: turtleneck weather. My favourite time, the season of loss and devotion.” (p. 128)
Although I was entranced by his Dublin Literary Award winning City of Bohane, I prefer his fiction that sticks to the here and now. Of course in Barry's fiction, the here and now sometimes wanders forward and backwards into the then and there, between the world as those with earthbound imaginations experience it and the world as those with more expansive imaginations experience it.
There Are Little Kingdoms includes some stunners: “Atlantic City”, “To the Hills”, “See the Tree, How Big It’s Grown”, “Animal Needs”, “Last Days of the Buffalo”, “The Wintersongs”, “Breakfast Wine”, “Nights At the Gin Palace”. A few disappointed, but not many. All in all, a wonderful collection. 4.5 stars
April 13, 2023
Barry was a recommendation on one of Blindboy Boatclub's podcasts (he has since featured on one). Hence I started on his first, published in 2007.
This is a superb collection of short stories from the Irish writer. Raw, joyful, bleak, obscure: perfectly encapsulating the human condition.
He is described by some as a modern day Joyce, and I'd agree. Both in style (realist fiction) and content (Ralph Coughlan in Barry's 'Burn the Bad Lamp' is akin to Joycean characters such as Little Chandler or Mr Duffy). Either way, both a master of prose.
And Barry's prose is relatable and stirs potent emotion. Nostalgia is rife, such as in 'Atlantic City', to which youth is captured perfectly: 'whatever summer was they'd trapped its essence and fizzed with it'.
Some of life's most complex questions are tamed by ordinary characters. On the subject of time, the hapless Mr Tobin in 'See the Tree, How Big It's Grown', poses the question: 'And what is time in itself, only an arbitrary and entirely illusory system designed to remind us of death? To separate us from the eternal present enjoyed by beasts of the fields'.
His stories are bitsy universes teeming with effortless poetic prose: 'The heads of the chickens twist from each other, like the crowd at Roland Garros'. In these universes, grasses and reeds are 'dusted grey from the factory's discharge', and characters are born of 'dismal fields and cold stone churches'.
In between are sandwiched sardonic and hysterical moments. In 'Party at Helen's', an after-party is too much for one young man - the resin-induced paranoia that overcomes him forcing him to flee from an upstairs window in utmost fear of the guards (police) who are 'definitely' out to get him. The embers of the same party deftly summed up as it fades out and reality arrives like a fist to the jaw: 'The cheap drugs were wearing off and Sunday morning began to announce itself. It threw rain against the windows, like handfuls of gravel and nails'.
Thoroughly enjoyed this and looking forward to his novels Beatlebone and City of Bohane next!
This is a superb collection of short stories from the Irish writer. Raw, joyful, bleak, obscure: perfectly encapsulating the human condition.
He is described by some as a modern day Joyce, and I'd agree. Both in style (realist fiction) and content (Ralph Coughlan in Barry's 'Burn the Bad Lamp' is akin to Joycean characters such as Little Chandler or Mr Duffy). Either way, both a master of prose.
And Barry's prose is relatable and stirs potent emotion. Nostalgia is rife, such as in 'Atlantic City', to which youth is captured perfectly: 'whatever summer was they'd trapped its essence and fizzed with it'.
Some of life's most complex questions are tamed by ordinary characters. On the subject of time, the hapless Mr Tobin in 'See the Tree, How Big It's Grown', poses the question: 'And what is time in itself, only an arbitrary and entirely illusory system designed to remind us of death? To separate us from the eternal present enjoyed by beasts of the fields'.
His stories are bitsy universes teeming with effortless poetic prose: 'The heads of the chickens twist from each other, like the crowd at Roland Garros'. In these universes, grasses and reeds are 'dusted grey from the factory's discharge', and characters are born of 'dismal fields and cold stone churches'.
In between are sandwiched sardonic and hysterical moments. In 'Party at Helen's', an after-party is too much for one young man - the resin-induced paranoia that overcomes him forcing him to flee from an upstairs window in utmost fear of the guards (police) who are 'definitely' out to get him. The embers of the same party deftly summed up as it fades out and reality arrives like a fist to the jaw: 'The cheap drugs were wearing off and Sunday morning began to announce itself. It threw rain against the windows, like handfuls of gravel and nails'.
Thoroughly enjoyed this and looking forward to his novels Beatlebone and City of Bohane next!
January 30, 2012
lovely book of stories, almost sketches really and some may find their thirst for plot and closure and such like unquenched. I'm not bothered by all that, I just enjoyed the character studies, the drinking, the folly, the (hard won)resignation, the thwarted sexual desires. Just like real life. More later (and some quotes). I know I'm falling behind on my reviews... I will catch up..
.. here's a bit more:
It is set mostly in small town Ireland (Galway is mentioned in one), but there are a couple (at the end) not – one set in Cumbria, another on an ice floe where passengers from a plane that has a forced landing have to line up. But mostly they concern farmers, or farm labourers (and not prosperous farmers: Meadowsweet Farm is put together out of breeze blocks, barbed wire and galvanised tin. The land is flat and featureless. There are sawn-off barrels with rancid rainwater. A snapped cable cracks like a whip and lifts sparks from a dismal concrete yard - the electrics are haywire. The septic tank is backed up.. There is a general sensation of slurry.), pub workers, dreamers, students, losers. Everybody’s had disappointment. They are mostly ‘realistic’ but one of the stories features a (cynical) genie and another someone who can tell futures from touching palms. Somehow these excursions beyond the real only serve to make the people and their fate more grim, not less. Often there is a glimpse of what could be – the glamorous woman who stops off in the delapidated pub who seemingly appreciates the slow afternoon of drinking, and the woman in England who proposes to turn the ramshackle family home into a mini-hotel and has invited a TV makeover programme to come and film it, much to the disappointment of her resigned father (Wifeless ten years, at large in the ancient house, prey to odd shudders in the small hours, Freddie Bliss had more or less given up on the idea of sleep. Subsequently he had gone a little daft). You soon realise that the makeover may not go as smoothly as planned.
Good stuff, I’m going to look out for his novel now.
.. here's a bit more:
It is set mostly in small town Ireland (Galway is mentioned in one), but there are a couple (at the end) not – one set in Cumbria, another on an ice floe where passengers from a plane that has a forced landing have to line up. But mostly they concern farmers, or farm labourers (and not prosperous farmers: Meadowsweet Farm is put together out of breeze blocks, barbed wire and galvanised tin. The land is flat and featureless. There are sawn-off barrels with rancid rainwater. A snapped cable cracks like a whip and lifts sparks from a dismal concrete yard - the electrics are haywire. The septic tank is backed up.. There is a general sensation of slurry.), pub workers, dreamers, students, losers. Everybody’s had disappointment. They are mostly ‘realistic’ but one of the stories features a (cynical) genie and another someone who can tell futures from touching palms. Somehow these excursions beyond the real only serve to make the people and their fate more grim, not less. Often there is a glimpse of what could be – the glamorous woman who stops off in the delapidated pub who seemingly appreciates the slow afternoon of drinking, and the woman in England who proposes to turn the ramshackle family home into a mini-hotel and has invited a TV makeover programme to come and film it, much to the disappointment of her resigned father (Wifeless ten years, at large in the ancient house, prey to odd shudders in the small hours, Freddie Bliss had more or less given up on the idea of sleep. Subsequently he had gone a little daft). You soon realise that the makeover may not go as smoothly as planned.
Good stuff, I’m going to look out for his novel now.
December 14, 2012
This title came to me heavily amped by Gordon Lish. He had instructed me to read a short story placed by Kevin Barry in a recent New Yorker magazine, which I did, and which I thought was OK, but nothing that would make me want to read an entire book of these short fictions. But I bought the book anyway, and I also bought the one novel he wrote just in case Mr. Lish was on to something the rest of the world would one day climb aboard on too and I could make a buck or two on selling a first printing. Lately I have been reading so many good books and having a rather lot of fun doing so. But I took a quick peek at the first story Atlantic City and was wowed by its language and dialogue. If the rest of the book were to continue on at this level of quality I would have been so amazed. But it is easy to bet that I wasn't. Hard for an entire book of short stories to flat knock me out unless the writer's name is Raymond Carver.
However, the first two stories are worth putting the cash down for the purchase of the entire book. The character James in Atlantic City will stay with you for a very long time. At least he is still with me weeks after the fact. Brilliant piece. Pinball wizard who talks personality, walks personality. Big fellow. A character unlike any you have ever met. The language and story in the second offering In the Hills is also done nicely and is basically about a boy hiking a bit with two quite different girls, staying overnight in a B&B before heading back down, and the choices offered when it came time for a possible pairing up for that evening. But looking back even now I would say that even that story wasn't so hot. The first one is, however. One of the best tales I have read in some time. Atlantic City. I say find the story somewhere online and just skip buying the book. That is my thoughtful advice. As a whole, THERE ARE LITTLE KINGDOMS is not what is has been cracked up to be. It is proof that Gordon and I don't always agree, but still our relationship endures.
However, the first two stories are worth putting the cash down for the purchase of the entire book. The character James in Atlantic City will stay with you for a very long time. At least he is still with me weeks after the fact. Brilliant piece. Pinball wizard who talks personality, walks personality. Big fellow. A character unlike any you have ever met. The language and story in the second offering In the Hills is also done nicely and is basically about a boy hiking a bit with two quite different girls, staying overnight in a B&B before heading back down, and the choices offered when it came time for a possible pairing up for that evening. But looking back even now I would say that even that story wasn't so hot. The first one is, however. One of the best tales I have read in some time. Atlantic City. I say find the story somewhere online and just skip buying the book. That is my thoughtful advice. As a whole, THERE ARE LITTLE KINGDOMS is not what is has been cracked up to be. It is proof that Gordon and I don't always agree, but still our relationship endures.
May 11, 2018
This collection of short stories by Irish writer Kevin Barry was a pleasure to read. The writing has a kind of magnetism and dry humour that kept me effortlessly interested but thinking back, I can't recollect more than a handful of stories that were memorable. At the beginning, I was sure I had latched on to a 4-5* star book, but as it progressed, the stories themselves became less and less remarkable. However, it did end with a good one and overall, the reading experience itself was an enjoyable journey. [Final rating: 3.75*]
December 10, 2020
I'm a huge fan of Kevin Barry's work and this is as good as all the rest. A small collection (his 1st I think) of short stories, mostly set in little rural towns in Ireland. He has a real ear for dialogue and these are funny and touching at the same time
May 18, 2024
I felt mean giving this two-stars so I gave it three. I wasn’t entirely sure why ‘There Are Little Kingdoms’ didn’t grab me.
It’s well observed, turns a good phrase, he’s a yarn puller with a touch of Raymond Carver, is witty, draws interest from the melancholic mundaneness of life and doesn’t feel the necessity to bring the story to a clear conclusions, all of which I like (with the exception of its similarity to Carver’s writing which I wasn’t that keen on either.)
Though some of the lines are a bit glib, thrown out to impress, they’re more than outnumbered by some acutely drawn and beautifully phrased observations,
‘… the drinking would slow now to a session pace—the dread of the morning had lifted, we had passed the hour of remorse, and we marched to the mellow afternoon.’
and witty lines:
‘As a matter of fact, your honour, I said, I have no intention of ever driving again. And he looks down at me, over the top of his glasses, and he says, Madam, I am here to facilitate your wishes.’
I thought maybe it was because I don’t read a lot of short stories, but I do enjoy reading the kind of magazines that Kevin Barry’s stories were originally published in. I also enjoyed the short form of José Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, and the enigmatic quirkiness of the contemporary ‘Tending the Elephant’ by Cheryl Pappas.
This maybe was the problem.
I found Barry, like Carver, has a self-conscious style of storytelling, that asks a little to be admired, where a single premise is championed brilliantly by characterisation and dialogue, and everything is clearly written out for the reader. They reminded me of Ronald Dahl’s TV programmes ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ even if the twist at the end is often a non-sequitur. Borges and Calvino look at a complex abstraction, using multiple ideas and viewpoints where the story is there to support the idea, that needs to be teased-out. Barry entertains on the page while maybe Borge and Calvino satisfy the mind. Pappas meanwhile creates a strange ethereality full of either lyrical lines and incongruities that are easy on the ear and eye.
You pay your money and take your choice.
It’s well observed, turns a good phrase, he’s a yarn puller with a touch of Raymond Carver, is witty, draws interest from the melancholic mundaneness of life and doesn’t feel the necessity to bring the story to a clear conclusions, all of which I like (with the exception of its similarity to Carver’s writing which I wasn’t that keen on either.)
Though some of the lines are a bit glib, thrown out to impress, they’re more than outnumbered by some acutely drawn and beautifully phrased observations,
‘… the drinking would slow now to a session pace—the dread of the morning had lifted, we had passed the hour of remorse, and we marched to the mellow afternoon.’
and witty lines:
‘As a matter of fact, your honour, I said, I have no intention of ever driving again. And he looks down at me, over the top of his glasses, and he says, Madam, I am here to facilitate your wishes.’
I thought maybe it was because I don’t read a lot of short stories, but I do enjoy reading the kind of magazines that Kevin Barry’s stories were originally published in. I also enjoyed the short form of José Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, and the enigmatic quirkiness of the contemporary ‘Tending the Elephant’ by Cheryl Pappas.
This maybe was the problem.
I found Barry, like Carver, has a self-conscious style of storytelling, that asks a little to be admired, where a single premise is championed brilliantly by characterisation and dialogue, and everything is clearly written out for the reader. They reminded me of Ronald Dahl’s TV programmes ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ even if the twist at the end is often a non-sequitur. Borges and Calvino look at a complex abstraction, using multiple ideas and viewpoints where the story is there to support the idea, that needs to be teased-out. Barry entertains on the page while maybe Borge and Calvino satisfy the mind. Pappas meanwhile creates a strange ethereality full of either lyrical lines and incongruities that are easy on the ear and eye.
You pay your money and take your choice.
November 16, 2018
Exceptional collection by a master of the short story. Full of humor and amazing prose, with hapless odd-ball characters dropped into fascinating situations they can't extricate themselves from, and the settings and towns in which these dramas play out are artfully described. I also loved his most recent collection, Dark Lies the Island and intend to reread it this year. I have yet to read City of Bohane, but a copy is on its way. Too, I need to reread Beetlebone and remind myself why I gave it 'only' 3 stars. I recall being somewhat disappointed, but I failed to write down the reasons why.
Excerpts from These Are Little Kingdoms:
Opening paragraph of the first story, 'Atlantic City':
A July evening, after a tar-melter of a day, and Broad Street was quiet and muffled with summer, the entire town was dozy with summer, and even as the summer peaked so it began to fade. Dogs didn’t know what had hit them. They walked around with their tongues hanging out and their eyes rolling and they lapped forlornly at the drains. The old were anxious, too: they twitched the curtains to look up the hills, and flapped themselves with copies of the RTE Guide to make a parlour breeze. Later, after dark, the bars would be giddy with lager drinkers, but it was early yet, and Broad Street was bare and peaceful in the blue evening.
From 'Animal Needs':
Madge was handsome but crazy, and he didn't need any more distractions. There was already the situation with Noreen. There was also the situation with Kelli Carmody at the sports centre, though that was most definitely over. Kelli was nineteen, for Christ's sake, and they are unpredictable as snakes at that age. He had changed the hours of his workouts to avoid her, and he fully intended to continue doing so. There is only so much a man's heart can take. He was still getting over Jenna. He knew whenever he saw her at the till in Lidl that he wasn't full over her yet. And Yvonne, too. Yvonne Troy was a heartbreaker. So no, there would be no more messing, there would be no more situation with Madge. Even if she did have legs that went up to Armagh.
From 'Last Days Of The Buffalo':
Foley closes his hand softly around the boy's hand then and a cold quiver passes between them. It's the feeling in the hazel switch when it divines water, and it's the feeling that comes at night when a tendon in the calf muscle has a twitched memory of a falling step, and it's there too, somehow, in the great confluence of starlings, when they spiral and twist like smoke in the evening sky. Foley holds the boy's hand and the feeling sustains for a single necessary moment.
Excerpts from These Are Little Kingdoms:
Opening paragraph of the first story, 'Atlantic City':
A July evening, after a tar-melter of a day, and Broad Street was quiet and muffled with summer, the entire town was dozy with summer, and even as the summer peaked so it began to fade. Dogs didn’t know what had hit them. They walked around with their tongues hanging out and their eyes rolling and they lapped forlornly at the drains. The old were anxious, too: they twitched the curtains to look up the hills, and flapped themselves with copies of the RTE Guide to make a parlour breeze. Later, after dark, the bars would be giddy with lager drinkers, but it was early yet, and Broad Street was bare and peaceful in the blue evening.
From 'Animal Needs':
Madge was handsome but crazy, and he didn't need any more distractions. There was already the situation with Noreen. There was also the situation with Kelli Carmody at the sports centre, though that was most definitely over. Kelli was nineteen, for Christ's sake, and they are unpredictable as snakes at that age. He had changed the hours of his workouts to avoid her, and he fully intended to continue doing so. There is only so much a man's heart can take. He was still getting over Jenna. He knew whenever he saw her at the till in Lidl that he wasn't full over her yet. And Yvonne, too. Yvonne Troy was a heartbreaker. So no, there would be no more messing, there would be no more situation with Madge. Even if she did have legs that went up to Armagh.
From 'Last Days Of The Buffalo':
Foley closes his hand softly around the boy's hand then and a cold quiver passes between them. It's the feeling in the hazel switch when it divines water, and it's the feeling that comes at night when a tendon in the calf muscle has a twitched memory of a falling step, and it's there too, somehow, in the great confluence of starlings, when they spiral and twist like smoke in the evening sky. Foley holds the boy's hand and the feeling sustains for a single necessary moment.
October 11, 2026
Kevin Barry is one of those authors that I read for the language. A July day isn’t just hot, it’s “a tar-melter of a day”. A cloudy one “had arrived into Clonmel like a morbid neighbor, dour and overcast”. “There’s a lethal amount of growth, and he’s pollen-sick from it,” describes another summer day. A late morning “and the sunlight harsh in its vitality, as if it was only here to show the place up.” “We were all of us in the town bitten with cold, whipped by the wind, utterly ravaged by this mean winter, but we stomped along regardless, like one of those marvellously tragic Russian armies one reads about.” And this is just how he talks about the weather.
Most of these stories take place in rural or small town Ireland. These aren’t the quaint, picturesque villages in tourism advertisements or travel articles. They’re left-behind places, static and stifling, the sort of places where familiarity breeds contempt at seeing the same, predictable faces over and over again. Not much happens in most of these tales. (Except for the last story, The Penguins, where a plane has to make an emergency landing.) They’re more lyrical descriptions of places and characters’s days than plot-driven. A chicken farmer is desperate to get the place up to scratch and have sex with a neighbor’'s wife before the farm inspector arrives. Adolescents hang out in the makeshift, village arcade, killing time on a summer evening. Two regulars and a publican are joined in their midday routine by a woman passing through town. An elderly woman keeps up a one-sided conversation with the young woman seated across from her on a train. A few, like the title story, the one about a taxi driver who can foresee people’s deaths, and the one where a genie appeared out of a lamp in a junk shop, had surreal elements alongside the everyday. But in that last instance, he turns out to be rather run-down genie with small powers, so he fit right in with his surroundings. All of them were sheer poetry, amongst all the dreary settings, often with wry humor.
Since Barry ends most of these stories in a open way that circles around to their descriptive beginnings, it only seems fitting to do so here.“The sun was making a good effort to come through the low banks of cloud; traffic streamed down for the new roundabout. Five sad slow notes played on a recorder. It was turning into June.”
Most of these stories take place in rural or small town Ireland. These aren’t the quaint, picturesque villages in tourism advertisements or travel articles. They’re left-behind places, static and stifling, the sort of places where familiarity breeds contempt at seeing the same, predictable faces over and over again. Not much happens in most of these tales. (Except for the last story, The Penguins, where a plane has to make an emergency landing.) They’re more lyrical descriptions of places and characters’s days than plot-driven. A chicken farmer is desperate to get the place up to scratch and have sex with a neighbor’'s wife before the farm inspector arrives. Adolescents hang out in the makeshift, village arcade, killing time on a summer evening. Two regulars and a publican are joined in their midday routine by a woman passing through town. An elderly woman keeps up a one-sided conversation with the young woman seated across from her on a train. A few, like the title story, the one about a taxi driver who can foresee people’s deaths, and the one where a genie appeared out of a lamp in a junk shop, had surreal elements alongside the everyday. But in that last instance, he turns out to be rather run-down genie with small powers, so he fit right in with his surroundings. All of them were sheer poetry, amongst all the dreary settings, often with wry humor.
The stout was about its work. It was the third drink of the day, and the drinking would slow now to session pace—the dread of the morning had lifted, we had passed the hour of remorse, and we marched to the mellow afternoon. Even Thomas was starting to look fairly chipper. A strange rumbling then, like dogs going at each other in the distance, but it was internal, miserably, and I wasn’t sure if it was my own stomach or the cousin’s. Serious drinking, the drinking of a lifetime’s devotion, is hard physical labor.Some of my personal favorites in this collection include that last example, To The Hills, where a man and two women from a walking club go on a hike around Wicklow to a bed and breakfast. The trip turns into a pilgrimage of sorts to find a night of intimacy, amid conversations of the proper foot and rain gear, and too much personal information. (Naming the B&B St Ignatius of Loyola was a nice touch.) Another was Party at Helen’s where the narrative slips from one person to another through a party at a rented house in Galway during the wee hours of a Saturday night that is becoming Sunday morning. Burn the Bad Lamp with it’s shabby genie barely granting wishes was another highlight for me. But honestly, there wasn’t an off one in the bunch, which for me, only Julian Barnes has matched.
(Breakfast Wine)
Into the fade of a September evening, the two of them, brazen and sixteen. They were tallish in wedge heels. They were visions in stonewash. The hair was teased out big. There had been long hours of painful backcombing.
(Ideal Homes)
He looked out into the street and it was familiar but odd, as if streets were running into the wrong streets, as if the hills were wrong, and the sky at a crooked slant, it was the amalgam place of a dream out there.
(See the Tree, How Big It’s Grown)
Some steak, said Brian.
It’s great, said Teresa, it’s done just right.
You can’t top well hung meat, said Marie, who was making shapes on her plate with fried onions. Waitress! Another bottle of that please.
Partying tonight, Mar! said Teresa.
Why the fuck not? said Marie. Has anyone change for the fag machine?
I didn’t know you smoked, Marie, said Brian.
Many hidden talents, she said.
(To The Hills)
Since Barry ends most of these stories in a open way that circles around to their descriptive beginnings, it only seems fitting to do so here.“The sun was making a good effort to come through the low banks of cloud; traffic streamed down for the new roundabout. Five sad slow notes played on a recorder. It was turning into June.”
March 28, 2022
3.5 stars
The only thing I’d read by Kevin Barry before this collection was his novel Beatlebone which I really enjoyed so I knew he could write before picking this up and I wasn’t disappointed. He is so good at conjuring up not only the landscapes of those around him but the characters themselves in just a few often beautiful short sentences and any issues I had with this collection didn’t have to do with the writing itself which is excellent.
Most of the stories are set in small villages or towns in Ireland -I believe only one is set in Britain- and there is that sense of boredom, poverty and addiction that can often characterize such places, not only in Ireland. Many of his characters are disaffected men, or teenagers and as I’m not a fan of reading about the latter, there were a couple here that didn’t work as well because of that although I could appreciate other things about those stories.
My favorites tended to be those with some humor to them, a wry sense of which runs through many of these or a sense of a life unfulfilled. To the Hills with its tale of two women both trying to cop off with the same unimpressive man. Last Days of The Buffalo with a melancholy, almost mystical feel to it and The Wintersongs where an old lady who has obviously lived a hell of a life, won’t stop talking to an uninterested teenage girl who is clearly running away from her own.
I really enjoyed the structure of Party at Helen’s where we move from perspective to perspective, from potential psycho to drug pusher to good time girl and Breakfast Wine with its single scene of three alcoholics in a dying town pub was also a memorable one. Ironically, I found the titular story less successful with a surreal and fantastical feel which didn’t work for me but even the ones I didn’t enjoy as much still had elements to them I could appreciate, especially as Barry’s pacing and structure is spot on and he writes a damn good ending.
The only thing I’d read by Kevin Barry before this collection was his novel Beatlebone which I really enjoyed so I knew he could write before picking this up and I wasn’t disappointed. He is so good at conjuring up not only the landscapes of those around him but the characters themselves in just a few often beautiful short sentences and any issues I had with this collection didn’t have to do with the writing itself which is excellent.
Most of the stories are set in small villages or towns in Ireland -I believe only one is set in Britain- and there is that sense of boredom, poverty and addiction that can often characterize such places, not only in Ireland. Many of his characters are disaffected men, or teenagers and as I’m not a fan of reading about the latter, there were a couple here that didn’t work as well because of that although I could appreciate other things about those stories.
My favorites tended to be those with some humor to them, a wry sense of which runs through many of these or a sense of a life unfulfilled. To the Hills with its tale of two women both trying to cop off with the same unimpressive man. Last Days of The Buffalo with a melancholy, almost mystical feel to it and The Wintersongs where an old lady who has obviously lived a hell of a life, won’t stop talking to an uninterested teenage girl who is clearly running away from her own.
I really enjoyed the structure of Party at Helen’s where we move from perspective to perspective, from potential psycho to drug pusher to good time girl and Breakfast Wine with its single scene of three alcoholics in a dying town pub was also a memorable one. Ironically, I found the titular story less successful with a surreal and fantastical feel which didn’t work for me but even the ones I didn’t enjoy as much still had elements to them I could appreciate, especially as Barry’s pacing and structure is spot on and he writes a damn good ending.
February 20, 2021
Kevin Barry's brilliant collection of short stories is one that needs to be savoured - slowly and patiently.
These tales give priceless glimpses into the lives of individuals in a small Irish setting, and have a wonderful aesthetic quality that will make you want to reread sentences, just because they will leave you in awe and you want to experience that moment again.
The stories are filled with characters who are often on aimless journeys, destinations unclear, and often, these stories feel like character sketches.
This is a book for people who enjoy beautiful prose, admire robust narrative voices, and for the enthusiast of the common and the strange.
These tales give priceless glimpses into the lives of individuals in a small Irish setting, and have a wonderful aesthetic quality that will make you want to reread sentences, just because they will leave you in awe and you want to experience that moment again.
The stories are filled with characters who are often on aimless journeys, destinations unclear, and often, these stories feel like character sketches.
This is a book for people who enjoy beautiful prose, admire robust narrative voices, and for the enthusiast of the common and the strange.
January 12, 2008
This is my review for The Short Review.
Reading Kevin Barry’s collection is like finding a shiny two-pound coin in a pile of muck. It brings unexpected pleasure. Not just because he gives you priceless glimpses into the lives of individuals in a small Irish setting, but also because it’s one of these collections you literally cannot finish in one sitting. It sent me into spirals of associations, memories, and universal contemplations. Double-takes of pure aesthetic admiration of prose. And bleats of laughter at the scrapes his characters get into (here, I’m specifically referring to Animal Needs, where one lust-soaked farmer winds himself deeper and deeper into a fandango -- an erotic dance – with wife-swapping neighbors).
The characters in Barry’s collection comprise, inter alia, a young buckaroo at the top of his billiard game, two fast girls looking for trouble, a lonesome hillwalker, an amnesiac, a genie with wry humor, a gigantic taxi-driver, an antique collector, a contemptuous air steward.
Rendered in lilting Irish brogue, what struck me is how often these characters are on aimless journeys, destinations unclear. The amnesiac who finds ownership documents in his duffel bag for a chip shop, surprises himself with his own porn collection (See the Tree, How Big It’s Grown). The incessantly talkative old biddy (The Wintersongs) riding a bus gives us a glimpse of her young fellow passenger at the crossroads of abandoning an old life and seeking a new one. Even the four corners of a felt-lined billiard table become a metaphor for trippyness, a purposeless ride of sorts, until the bright young star himself is vanquished in death.
One more thing. Barry’s power of description is awe-inspiring. Nothing soporific about it. It’s not sentimental, but it contains lushness. It makes you believe there are little kingdoms invisible to the eye. “And Broad Street was on fire. The last of the evening gave out in a show of dying golds and reds. The street lamps came on. The blue flicker of television screens could be seen behind terraced windows. The summer night announced itself, with its own starlit energies. It brought temptation, yearning and ache, because these are the summer things.” (Atlantic City)
If there’s anything to fault, it’s the light plotting hand Barry wields – often, these stories feel like character sketches; it leaves one craving – I would have liked to stay longer with any of them. Party at Helen’s actually reads like a series of shifting character point-of-views and tantalizing profiling. The last couple of stories in the collection are also weaker by comparison – the title story itself, There Are Little Kingdoms, is a dip into an unstable wino’s mind. But that’s all there is and I can’t help wishing for more.
Even so, this will be a rewarding read for the prose aesthete, for those who admire robust narrative voices, and for the enthusiast of the common and the strange.
Reading Kevin Barry’s collection is like finding a shiny two-pound coin in a pile of muck. It brings unexpected pleasure. Not just because he gives you priceless glimpses into the lives of individuals in a small Irish setting, but also because it’s one of these collections you literally cannot finish in one sitting. It sent me into spirals of associations, memories, and universal contemplations. Double-takes of pure aesthetic admiration of prose. And bleats of laughter at the scrapes his characters get into (here, I’m specifically referring to Animal Needs, where one lust-soaked farmer winds himself deeper and deeper into a fandango -- an erotic dance – with wife-swapping neighbors).
The characters in Barry’s collection comprise, inter alia, a young buckaroo at the top of his billiard game, two fast girls looking for trouble, a lonesome hillwalker, an amnesiac, a genie with wry humor, a gigantic taxi-driver, an antique collector, a contemptuous air steward.
Rendered in lilting Irish brogue, what struck me is how often these characters are on aimless journeys, destinations unclear. The amnesiac who finds ownership documents in his duffel bag for a chip shop, surprises himself with his own porn collection (See the Tree, How Big It’s Grown). The incessantly talkative old biddy (The Wintersongs) riding a bus gives us a glimpse of her young fellow passenger at the crossroads of abandoning an old life and seeking a new one. Even the four corners of a felt-lined billiard table become a metaphor for trippyness, a purposeless ride of sorts, until the bright young star himself is vanquished in death.
One more thing. Barry’s power of description is awe-inspiring. Nothing soporific about it. It’s not sentimental, but it contains lushness. It makes you believe there are little kingdoms invisible to the eye. “And Broad Street was on fire. The last of the evening gave out in a show of dying golds and reds. The street lamps came on. The blue flicker of television screens could be seen behind terraced windows. The summer night announced itself, with its own starlit energies. It brought temptation, yearning and ache, because these are the summer things.” (Atlantic City)
If there’s anything to fault, it’s the light plotting hand Barry wields – often, these stories feel like character sketches; it leaves one craving – I would have liked to stay longer with any of them. Party at Helen’s actually reads like a series of shifting character point-of-views and tantalizing profiling. The last couple of stories in the collection are also weaker by comparison – the title story itself, There Are Little Kingdoms, is a dip into an unstable wino’s mind. But that’s all there is and I can’t help wishing for more.
Even so, this will be a rewarding read for the prose aesthete, for those who admire robust narrative voices, and for the enthusiast of the common and the strange.
April 7, 2013
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It will be on my 'currently reading' list indefinitely. I have read it all, but I intend re-reading it on a regular basis over the summer. If you found City of Bohane a little tough going, but enjoy Kevin Barry's style of writing, you will LOVE this book.
Anyone with an interest in writing short stories should regard this book as a sort of textbook/Bible.
Anyone with an interest in writing short stories should regard this book as a sort of textbook/Bible.
April 9, 2014
A wonderful collection of short stories that starts like this:
"A July evening, after a tar-melter of a day, and Broad Street was quiet and muffled with summer, the entire town was dozy with summer, and even as the summer peaked so it began to fade."
Need I say more?
"A July evening, after a tar-melter of a day, and Broad Street was quiet and muffled with summer, the entire town was dozy with summer, and even as the summer peaked so it began to fade."
Need I say more?
January 14, 2021
I love the energy of this collection; it crackles and snaps, it trickles along quietly and then pulses back to life to remind you that its presence is ever-there. ⚡️ The lyricism is something to behold. The careful word-choices and slotting together of sentences that just trip and spill and glide the page in front of you. The way the stories pull at the heart-strings before making you laugh hard, loud. The characters—particularly in my favourites, Breakfast Wine & The Wintersongs—are just quietly plump with personality, a thousand little habits of a lifetime that glow in a few scant phrases and words. Simply put, this is short-story writing at its very best.
March 30, 2022
On each of the stories from the first paragraph, you're hooked in straightaway.
Kevin Barry nails the characters - putting himself into the mind of what are mostly broken subjects - posh old-money tragic figures, single people getting on in life looking for romance, alcoholics at a desolate empty local pub. Very enjoyable read.
One of the standout lines
"His accent pure roscommon, it was designed for roaring over chainsaws and horsing out ballads of fallen martyrs of irish republicanism but he had honed it somehow to a hoarse sounding late night cool."
Kevin Barry nails the characters - putting himself into the mind of what are mostly broken subjects - posh old-money tragic figures, single people getting on in life looking for romance, alcoholics at a desolate empty local pub. Very enjoyable read.
One of the standout lines
"His accent pure roscommon, it was designed for roaring over chainsaws and horsing out ballads of fallen martyrs of irish republicanism but he had honed it somehow to a hoarse sounding late night cool."
March 8, 2022
An absolute gem.
"To the Hills" a particular highlight among another incredible collection of short stories.
"To the Hills" a particular highlight among another incredible collection of short stories.
February 3, 2016
Kevin Barry is a remarkable writer. I’ve been to Ireland twice on trips that lasted days and never strayed outside Dublin, but his rendering of the nether regions of the Emerald Isle, of the fortunate and not-so-fortunate who inhabit the place and the detritus of their lives gives me the sense that I was born and raised nowhere else. The language so fine, the cadence so easy, Barry’s fictionalized (one does wonder, though) stories from the margins are the purest cocktail of fractured joy and flawed beauty. And set in Ireland, these stories enter the realm of escapist literature for most of us, and with the added benefit of nary a wizard or a wormhole in sight.
It’s Barry’s evident love for the place that grabs me. Despite the aching desperation of the lives he chronicles, the appeal to know these people is irresistible. The teens who frequent Moloney’s Arcade with the pinball machine that croaks out “ATLANTIC CITY. FEEL THE FORCE!” with each new high score. A hillwalker who lectures his love interest, Theresa, a newcomer to the sport, on the merits of a good Goretex boot while lying naked with her in bed, having not had sex. And her vodka slogging friend Marie who may have been the better choice in this odd love triangle. And all these people in the glottal mouthful that is the town of Clonmel: “The bus was quiet, with just a handful of sad cases thrown here and there, the elderly and the infirm, the free-pass brigade with their jaunty afflictions.”
The loneliness, the imperfect hopes for a hand to touch, a friend, and even for magic. The anti-Facebook world. The uncoolest, saddest, though not manipulatively so – lives you could ever imagine WANTING to read about. The world’s discarded, lost, in a land of mossy, damp Catholic imagery, and yet, a race so remarkably, inevitably blessed, so enviable.
I’m one of those tireless Tom Waits devotees, and I have wondered about Tom’s inexplicable appeal to non-English speaking Europeans – but that appeal somehow helps me understand the draw of Kevin Barry to those of us with little true sense of Ireland, and little literary interest in swords or sorcerers. I know nothing, nearly, of the place. But in everything I’ve read by Barry so far, within a handful of sentences he has taken me there, set me down none too gently at a soggy bus stop in some provincial town and dared me not to want to stay.
A deeply gifted writer and rare, natural storyteller.
It’s Barry’s evident love for the place that grabs me. Despite the aching desperation of the lives he chronicles, the appeal to know these people is irresistible. The teens who frequent Moloney’s Arcade with the pinball machine that croaks out “ATLANTIC CITY. FEEL THE FORCE!” with each new high score. A hillwalker who lectures his love interest, Theresa, a newcomer to the sport, on the merits of a good Goretex boot while lying naked with her in bed, having not had sex. And her vodka slogging friend Marie who may have been the better choice in this odd love triangle. And all these people in the glottal mouthful that is the town of Clonmel: “The bus was quiet, with just a handful of sad cases thrown here and there, the elderly and the infirm, the free-pass brigade with their jaunty afflictions.”
The loneliness, the imperfect hopes for a hand to touch, a friend, and even for magic. The anti-Facebook world. The uncoolest, saddest, though not manipulatively so – lives you could ever imagine WANTING to read about. The world’s discarded, lost, in a land of mossy, damp Catholic imagery, and yet, a race so remarkably, inevitably blessed, so enviable.
I’m one of those tireless Tom Waits devotees, and I have wondered about Tom’s inexplicable appeal to non-English speaking Europeans – but that appeal somehow helps me understand the draw of Kevin Barry to those of us with little true sense of Ireland, and little literary interest in swords or sorcerers. I know nothing, nearly, of the place. But in everything I’ve read by Barry so far, within a handful of sentences he has taken me there, set me down none too gently at a soggy bus stop in some provincial town and dared me not to want to stay.
A deeply gifted writer and rare, natural storyteller.
September 7, 2020
Barry wrote this back in 2007 and this was his breakthrough book. Most stories set in small-town Ireland at the beginning of the 21st century but some like Atlantic City go back further. The writing is exquisite and every word teased out painfully to be made look effortless when read. He mines small-town Ireland very well and stands firmly on the shoulders of Pat McCabe.
Atlantic City is a story of a pool table and pinball machine for teenagers in a breeze block extension in a small town in Ireland in the seventies. I was there in my own skin for the duration of the story. Poignant end with a sting in the tail.
To the hills is about Three walkers two women one man - a love triangle is insinuated in a night away. Goretex on Goretex excites. B and B in the hills. Gentle persuasion to intimacy.
See the tree how big it's grown.
A man arrives by bus into Clonmel and finds out he's just bought a chipper. He devours drink and finds he can sing. He gets tremors and he is not sure who he is. As he wanders around discovering the town we are given a blurry vision of an Irish Town in what seems like the seventies or eighties.
Winter Songs
Young woman tries to ignore an older woman talking on a train journey to Dublin - captures what you used to hear on an Irish train before everyone got a phone.
Burn the bad lamp
Genie appears and has a mad conversation with the lamp's owner - very much turns the Aladdin's lamp story on its head.
There are little kingdoms
Not sure about this one even though it's the title story. It's a little meandering. Most of the time Kevin Barry's madness works in stories but this one didn't for me.
Night at the Gin Palace
A bit out there - long days journey into night for two people drinking their way through the night.
The Penguins
Great story of a crash landing on an iced landscape in Greenland.
Atlantic City is a story of a pool table and pinball machine for teenagers in a breeze block extension in a small town in Ireland in the seventies. I was there in my own skin for the duration of the story. Poignant end with a sting in the tail.
To the hills is about Three walkers two women one man - a love triangle is insinuated in a night away. Goretex on Goretex excites. B and B in the hills. Gentle persuasion to intimacy.
See the tree how big it's grown.
A man arrives by bus into Clonmel and finds out he's just bought a chipper. He devours drink and finds he can sing. He gets tremors and he is not sure who he is. As he wanders around discovering the town we are given a blurry vision of an Irish Town in what seems like the seventies or eighties.
Winter Songs
Young woman tries to ignore an older woman talking on a train journey to Dublin - captures what you used to hear on an Irish train before everyone got a phone.
Burn the bad lamp
Genie appears and has a mad conversation with the lamp's owner - very much turns the Aladdin's lamp story on its head.
There are little kingdoms
Not sure about this one even though it's the title story. It's a little meandering. Most of the time Kevin Barry's madness works in stories but this one didn't for me.
Night at the Gin Palace
A bit out there - long days journey into night for two people drinking their way through the night.
The Penguins
Great story of a crash landing on an iced landscape in Greenland.
Read
May 1, 2018I really like Kevin Barry. City of Bohane really tickled my sweet spot, a nightmarish urban fantasy with the tightest literary chops, and these rambling collection of short stories about an Ireland not seen on Aer Lingus commercials, is top notch. He has a fabulous ear for dialogue, his stuff is very funny without seeming false, you can sort of imagine his cast of low rent drunks and club drug ridden teens talking in the way they talk. The prose altogether is pretty fabulous, there are about a million throw away line I really wiped my brow over. Liked this a ton, check it out. But check out John’s book first.
October 4, 2016
*4.25 stars. As evidenced in the quotations listed below, Barry's words amaze.
“His hungry gaze asked severe questions of their confidence and inside they seethed at being reduced to these giggles, this nudging” (6).
“The farmer looked to the velvet sky, and he considered the vagaries of life, chance, and sheep management” (7).
“There would be two hours of shy talk over stretched drinks” (14).
“...the slow hours of the afternoon yawned and presented themselves with a certain belligerence. Those who go mad go mad first in the afternoons” (17).
“A silence had fallen on the three hillwalkers, it had a knuckly and mannish grip” (17).
“He knew more about the hills than he knew about himself, but lush, yes, as if it was May, a savage growth that made each small copse of trees livid with bunched ferocity” (21).
“...this afternoon in the apparent summer…” (21).
“...and the small whiskey appeared as a cheerful companion” (24).
“...the town swooned with glow, like a back-lit ale” (25).
“One chap left a newspaper on the counter, which let him know he had a Tuesday on his hands” (27).
“There is the great disease of familiarity. These are long, bruised days on the midland plain” (36).
“Fear is a black wet ditch on a cold night. It is hard to claw yourself out, your fingers slip in the loam” (39).
“There is a white nervous sky, and magpies are everywhere on patrol…” (39).
“He breaches the tearful peripheries of the town. He makes it through to the central square under a tormented sky; he parks” (40).
“There are feelings that can settle in stone. There is an age-old malaise in the vicinity of this terrace. It has soaked into the grain of the place. The afternoons looking out on sheeting rain...The nights staring into the dark infinities...How would a place be right after it?” (40).
“How the fuck much are vets making these days?” (41).
“Nervous agitation works like water on stone. It is a slow, steady dripping that can meet no answering force. Over time, it washes everything away” (42).
“Oh the terrible spittle of revenge that formed on the grey lips of big weeping Jim Flaherty” (47).
“She climbs in and pulls the covers over her head to thicken the dark” (51).
“The twins were mesmerised by the skinned rabbits. The wine-coloured flesh, with maplines of blue for the hardened veins, and the taut muscles and tendons that still gave a sense of momentum, of swiftness perfected: the hung and skinned rabbits were frozen speed” (70).
“This is a poor woman, the first thing she thinks about of a morning is feet. You step out of the bed and there they are. Always and forever, clomping along beneath you, like boats. You run for a bus. You step onto a dance floor. You try to pull on a pair of nylons” (74).
“Here was sweet life, and the common run, also the shades of mild hysteria” (75).
“...and they went slowly through and on, at a creaking rumble…” (76).
“She simmered with happiness” (79).
“...it flashed with trinket menace” (79).
“Some early workers were eating eggs in the cafe on the corner, lost in newspapers, winter, the steam of their tea” (80).
“She was so button-nosed you would think to press on it and hear a bell” (85).
“The table had flyers for pizza, taxis and Jesus” (87).
“His eyes were frightened and atrocious, pissholes in the snow…” (87).
"His world was round, twelve inches in circumference, and made out of black vinyl" (90).
“...and there was the rush and mingle of brown and cream notes, and the blackness rising, a magic show you would never tire of” (96). *Describing a pint of Irish stout.
“...which he dealt out with Vegas flourish” (98).
“The classical music succumbed to a news bulletin” (98).
“Now jealousy was no stranger in the town. It was my own foul weather, a cold mist that surrounded me” (100).
“...for the days were slow in The North Star, and the nights were only trotting after them” (101).
“The classical station went into its period of great torpor, to the slowest dirges and dreamiest movements” (104).
“Car doors slamming was the punctuation of the place” (104).
“It is a Tuesday, in March, with all that that suggests” (107).
“He wears a pair of troubled chinos…” (110).
“...because you’re self-important with it when you’re young, you carry it like a small dog carries a stick” (117).
“It was deadening winter, one of those feeble afternoons with coal smoke for light…” (119).
“...and the traffic groaned, sulked, convulsed itself, and the face of the town was pinched with ill-ease” (119).
“...my thoughts swung through the air like tiny acrobats, flung each other into the big tent’s canvas maw, missed the catch, fell to the net” (120).
“The sky was heavy with snow, and it began to fall, and each drop had taken on the stain of the town before it hit the pavement” (124).
“‘If you seek an answer to the sense of vagueness that surrounds your existence like a fine mist, please press four’” (128).
“‘You’re background colour! You can say hello and look whiskery and that’s it’” (135).
“...bright-eyed with enthusiasm/medication” (146).
“The crushed democracy of the cheap seats…” (146).
“I picture the pills as janitors of liver and spleen, wearing jaunty work caps and polite grimaces, making minimum wage” (147).
“The fade of a melon sun glows over the vast country, in birthday card tones…” (148).
“Put us in a tin can at 28,000 feet and we become so obviously of our breed” (148).
“There is a majorly dramatic sound from the internals--Kerrrrrrunnnchhhh!--like gears changing in God’s pick-up” (148).
“‘My husband is like one of those second-hand books you buy that’s got all the wrong bits underlined’” (151-152).
“His hungry gaze asked severe questions of their confidence and inside they seethed at being reduced to these giggles, this nudging” (6).
“The farmer looked to the velvet sky, and he considered the vagaries of life, chance, and sheep management” (7).
“There would be two hours of shy talk over stretched drinks” (14).
“...the slow hours of the afternoon yawned and presented themselves with a certain belligerence. Those who go mad go mad first in the afternoons” (17).
“A silence had fallen on the three hillwalkers, it had a knuckly and mannish grip” (17).
“He knew more about the hills than he knew about himself, but lush, yes, as if it was May, a savage growth that made each small copse of trees livid with bunched ferocity” (21).
“...this afternoon in the apparent summer…” (21).
“...and the small whiskey appeared as a cheerful companion” (24).
“...the town swooned with glow, like a back-lit ale” (25).
“One chap left a newspaper on the counter, which let him know he had a Tuesday on his hands” (27).
“There is the great disease of familiarity. These are long, bruised days on the midland plain” (36).
“Fear is a black wet ditch on a cold night. It is hard to claw yourself out, your fingers slip in the loam” (39).
“There is a white nervous sky, and magpies are everywhere on patrol…” (39).
“He breaches the tearful peripheries of the town. He makes it through to the central square under a tormented sky; he parks” (40).
“There are feelings that can settle in stone. There is an age-old malaise in the vicinity of this terrace. It has soaked into the grain of the place. The afternoons looking out on sheeting rain...The nights staring into the dark infinities...How would a place be right after it?” (40).
“How the fuck much are vets making these days?” (41).
“Nervous agitation works like water on stone. It is a slow, steady dripping that can meet no answering force. Over time, it washes everything away” (42).
“Oh the terrible spittle of revenge that formed on the grey lips of big weeping Jim Flaherty” (47).
“She climbs in and pulls the covers over her head to thicken the dark” (51).
“The twins were mesmerised by the skinned rabbits. The wine-coloured flesh, with maplines of blue for the hardened veins, and the taut muscles and tendons that still gave a sense of momentum, of swiftness perfected: the hung and skinned rabbits were frozen speed” (70).
“This is a poor woman, the first thing she thinks about of a morning is feet. You step out of the bed and there they are. Always and forever, clomping along beneath you, like boats. You run for a bus. You step onto a dance floor. You try to pull on a pair of nylons” (74).
“Here was sweet life, and the common run, also the shades of mild hysteria” (75).
“...and they went slowly through and on, at a creaking rumble…” (76).
“She simmered with happiness” (79).
“...it flashed with trinket menace” (79).
“Some early workers were eating eggs in the cafe on the corner, lost in newspapers, winter, the steam of their tea” (80).
“She was so button-nosed you would think to press on it and hear a bell” (85).
“The table had flyers for pizza, taxis and Jesus” (87).
“His eyes were frightened and atrocious, pissholes in the snow…” (87).
"His world was round, twelve inches in circumference, and made out of black vinyl" (90).
“...and there was the rush and mingle of brown and cream notes, and the blackness rising, a magic show you would never tire of” (96). *Describing a pint of Irish stout.
“...which he dealt out with Vegas flourish” (98).
“The classical music succumbed to a news bulletin” (98).
“Now jealousy was no stranger in the town. It was my own foul weather, a cold mist that surrounded me” (100).
“...for the days were slow in The North Star, and the nights were only trotting after them” (101).
“The classical station went into its period of great torpor, to the slowest dirges and dreamiest movements” (104).
“Car doors slamming was the punctuation of the place” (104).
“It is a Tuesday, in March, with all that that suggests” (107).
“He wears a pair of troubled chinos…” (110).
“...because you’re self-important with it when you’re young, you carry it like a small dog carries a stick” (117).
“It was deadening winter, one of those feeble afternoons with coal smoke for light…” (119).
“...and the traffic groaned, sulked, convulsed itself, and the face of the town was pinched with ill-ease” (119).
“...my thoughts swung through the air like tiny acrobats, flung each other into the big tent’s canvas maw, missed the catch, fell to the net” (120).
“The sky was heavy with snow, and it began to fall, and each drop had taken on the stain of the town before it hit the pavement” (124).
“‘If you seek an answer to the sense of vagueness that surrounds your existence like a fine mist, please press four’” (128).
“‘You’re background colour! You can say hello and look whiskery and that’s it’” (135).
“...bright-eyed with enthusiasm/medication” (146).
“The crushed democracy of the cheap seats…” (146).
“I picture the pills as janitors of liver and spleen, wearing jaunty work caps and polite grimaces, making minimum wage” (147).
“The fade of a melon sun glows over the vast country, in birthday card tones…” (148).
“Put us in a tin can at 28,000 feet and we become so obviously of our breed” (148).
“There is a majorly dramatic sound from the internals--Kerrrrrrunnnchhhh!--like gears changing in God’s pick-up” (148).
“‘My husband is like one of those second-hand books you buy that’s got all the wrong bits underlined’” (151-152).
April 1, 2021
For me, this was my first "God, I wish I could write like this" moment. Every single one of Barry's stories is written exquisitely; with words assembling into pure magic as he describes a hot Irish summer or any of his quirky but endearing characters.
Not only is his prose a delight to read, but there's also something very Chekhovian in There are Little Kingdoms; a simple pub conversation or a father/daughter reunion can leave the reader feeling tremors of joy and transcendence. This is sublime art meeting superb craft, and I wish I could give it more stars.
Not only is his prose a delight to read, but there's also something very Chekhovian in There are Little Kingdoms; a simple pub conversation or a father/daughter reunion can leave the reader feeling tremors of joy and transcendence. This is sublime art meeting superb craft, and I wish I could give it more stars.
December 17, 2024
The Irish are the world's best storytellers, and Kevin Barry maintains the tradition here. Nothing overly-dramatic happens in any of the vignettes in this collection. Nobody gets maimed, raped, or murdered. Ordinary people do and say ordinary things, and therein lies the beauty. We've been conditioned by t.v. and movies to expect the grand and majestic, but very few of us live grand and majestic lives. Kevin Barry knows this and celebrates that truth without sentiment or disdain in this collection.
December 17, 2021
Fantastic, super sad, always engrossing set of extremely Irish short stories with absolutely otherworldly writing. Filled with eye-opening, gut-punching, frequently hilarious, next-level prose. If there were perhaps two or three stories that didn't do much for me (the more fantastical entries felt thinner), easily 10 out of these 13 stories were were some of the best pieces of writing I read all year. Now I'm on the hunt for more Kevin Barry.
August 31, 2025
I hadn’t enjoyed short stories in a long time as much as I enjoyed the ones in this book. A very well crafted balance of humour, drama, and reflection that does enough to make you think about a lot of topics too.
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