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Walking
A collection of seventeen (17) short fiction by the author set in many popular Australian locations including Kalgoorlie, Sydney, St Kilda, Melbourne.
This collection contains stories dealing with the darker side of life with references to crime, violence and drugs.
Noir fiction with a gritty Australian backdrop.
This collection contains stories dealing with the darker side of life with references to crime, violence and drugs.
Noir fiction with a gritty Australian backdrop.
214 pages, Paperback
Published April 4, 16
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About the author
Sean O'Leary
13 books22 followersWebsite:https://seanolearywriter.com/
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Sean O’Leary is a writer of crime and literary fiction from Melbourne, Australia. He has published five short story collections, two novellas, and four novels, as well as over forty-five individual short stories in journals. He walks through cities, along coasts, and on bush tracks. He takes photographs like a madman, does some drawing, and thinks test cricket is the greatest game of all.
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/oleary4119/
instagram 2:http://www.instagram.com/point_and_sh...
twitter: https://twitter.com/SeanOl777
next chapter: https://nextchapter.pub/authors/sean-...
https://www.facebook.com/sean.oleary....
Sean O’Leary is a writer of crime and literary fiction from Melbourne, Australia. He has published five short story collections, two novellas, and four novels, as well as over forty-five individual short stories in journals. He walks through cities, along coasts, and on bush tracks. He takes photographs like a madman, does some drawing, and thinks test cricket is the greatest game of all.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 29, 2016
A gritty and sometimes horrific, with the exception of one future dystopia, totally realistic read.
It starts with the seemingly harmless ‘Walking’. A short story (they are all short stories, the longest is only about 8000 words) depicting the first 24 hours of someone coming out of a Psych ward. It is so real, so well described and depicted that you feel you are in the person’s head. Then comes the horrifying twist in the tale’s end. You back pedal fast, you feel like screaming, but you come back for more. That is how well written this stuff is.
In the next story our protagonist is about to lose it all – his wife, his kids, his home. He has already lost his job. In desperation he agrees to be a driver for a heist ...
In the next story our protagonist discovers he has an almost adult son. The kid wants to meet him. He’s never had a son, not that he knows of, anyway. Does he want a relationship, does he even care? Does the boy want a father? Does he even need one? The heart warming ending surprises even our protagonist.
And so the stories go on – from the futuristic to the past, from downright earthy to the heart breaking search and rescue missions, the assassin who is reassessing his life, and the rotten parents who give our protagonist an instant and very welcome family.
These stories will horrify you, make you cry, make you want nothing to do with life and people, and make you glad to be alive. Sean is a superb writer, he has that rare ability to totally suck you into his story and you live it with the protagonist.
I did not ‘like like’ every story, but I certainly appreciated them all.
It starts with the seemingly harmless ‘Walking’. A short story (they are all short stories, the longest is only about 8000 words) depicting the first 24 hours of someone coming out of a Psych ward. It is so real, so well described and depicted that you feel you are in the person’s head. Then comes the horrifying twist in the tale’s end. You back pedal fast, you feel like screaming, but you come back for more. That is how well written this stuff is.
In the next story our protagonist is about to lose it all – his wife, his kids, his home. He has already lost his job. In desperation he agrees to be a driver for a heist ...
In the next story our protagonist discovers he has an almost adult son. The kid wants to meet him. He’s never had a son, not that he knows of, anyway. Does he want a relationship, does he even care? Does the boy want a father? Does he even need one? The heart warming ending surprises even our protagonist.
And so the stories go on – from the futuristic to the past, from downright earthy to the heart breaking search and rescue missions, the assassin who is reassessing his life, and the rotten parents who give our protagonist an instant and very welcome family.
These stories will horrify you, make you cry, make you want nothing to do with life and people, and make you glad to be alive. Sean is a superb writer, he has that rare ability to totally suck you into his story and you live it with the protagonist.
I did not ‘like like’ every story, but I certainly appreciated them all.
April 6, 2016
Review of Walking by Sean O’Leary
This is a collection of 17 short stories by the author, who writes in a “stream of conscious” style.
O’Leary writes about a lot of confronting subjects. The title piece, Walking, throws the reader in at the deep end, written in first person and dealing with the narrator’s release from a psychiatric ward having been declared “legally insane for eight weeks” after being diagnosed with schizophrenia, a condition shared by the author. This theme is touched on in another story in the book
The author has an uncanny knack for channelling well-defined characters who all speak with clear, strong voices, but the reader’s never sure exactly where fiction and his own life experiences meet in this collection which offers stories about a desperate robbery gone wrong; a father’s shock at meeting the grown son he never knew he had; two science fiction stories and two coming of age stories among others, with lots of music, violence, drug culture and criminal underworld references.
‘Connections’, an underworld story viewed through the eyes of a private detective, was one of my favourites in this collection, perhaps because there was a glimmer of a silver lining around the cloud.
‘The Shotguns’, a greatest band that never was story, was also a stand-out piece for me.
Almost all of the stories (even the two SF stories) offer a gritty, suburban backdrop set in familiar suburbs of Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. If you like Noir fiction, this collection is for you.
Available from peggybrightbooks.com.
This is a collection of 17 short stories by the author, who writes in a “stream of conscious” style.
O’Leary writes about a lot of confronting subjects. The title piece, Walking, throws the reader in at the deep end, written in first person and dealing with the narrator’s release from a psychiatric ward having been declared “legally insane for eight weeks” after being diagnosed with schizophrenia, a condition shared by the author. This theme is touched on in another story in the book
The author has an uncanny knack for channelling well-defined characters who all speak with clear, strong voices, but the reader’s never sure exactly where fiction and his own life experiences meet in this collection which offers stories about a desperate robbery gone wrong; a father’s shock at meeting the grown son he never knew he had; two science fiction stories and two coming of age stories among others, with lots of music, violence, drug culture and criminal underworld references.
‘Connections’, an underworld story viewed through the eyes of a private detective, was one of my favourites in this collection, perhaps because there was a glimmer of a silver lining around the cloud.
‘The Shotguns’, a greatest band that never was story, was also a stand-out piece for me.
Almost all of the stories (even the two SF stories) offer a gritty, suburban backdrop set in familiar suburbs of Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. If you like Noir fiction, this collection is for you.
Available from peggybrightbooks.com.
June 14, 2016
Walking is a noir fiction collection that is by no means slow paced. The characters hurtle themselves full speed into situations there can be no turning back from. Criminals become victims of their own crimes. The good and bad alike struggle for direction. Plans are made and thwarted, while sometimes the best man loses and the unlikeliest of players wins. O’Leary’s stories are unpredictable, his prose terse and uncluttered.
Although its 17 stories are set in Australian locations, I did not get a feel for these because the setting was painted with sparse brush strokes. The reader need only change the names of cities, streets and landmarks and each story would have worked equally well anywhere in urban Australia. As a result, the prose often felt claustrophobic, due to a lack of sensory detail.
Walking is set in the present, yet reminds me of crime fiction of bygone days. Women are mostly given bit parts. As a female reader I would have liked a more balanced representation of gender. At times the stories felt like snippets of a much bigger picture, but nevertheless provided glimpses into the fine balance between surviving and perishing in the darker depths of Australian society.
Although its 17 stories are set in Australian locations, I did not get a feel for these because the setting was painted with sparse brush strokes. The reader need only change the names of cities, streets and landmarks and each story would have worked equally well anywhere in urban Australia. As a result, the prose often felt claustrophobic, due to a lack of sensory detail.
Walking is set in the present, yet reminds me of crime fiction of bygone days. Women are mostly given bit parts. As a female reader I would have liked a more balanced representation of gender. At times the stories felt like snippets of a much bigger picture, but nevertheless provided glimpses into the fine balance between surviving and perishing in the darker depths of Australian society.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews