The Boatman and Other Stories

by Billy O'Callaghan

The breathtaking short story collection from the Costa-shortlisted Irish writer

In these twelve quietly dazzling, carefully crafted stories, Billy O’Callaghan explores the resilience of the human heart and its ability to keep beating even in the wake of grief, trauma and lost love.

Spanning a century and two continents – from the muddy fields of Ireland to a hotel room in Paris, a dingy bar in Segovia to an aeroplane bound for Taipei – The Boatman follows an unforgettable cast of characters. Three gunshots on the Irish border define the course of a young man’s life; a writer clings fast to a star-crossed affair with a woman who has never been fully in his reach; a fisherman accustomed to hard labour rolls up his sleeves to dig a grave for his child; a pair of newly-weds embark on their first adventure, living wild on the deserted Beginish Island.

Ranging from the elegiac to the brutally confrontational, these densely layered tales reveal the quiet heroism and gentle dignity of ordinary life. O’Callaghan is a master celebrant of the smallness of the human flame against the dark: its strength, and its steady brightness.

Genres: Short Stories, Ireland, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Irish Literature, Cultural, Contemporary

226 pages, Hardcover

First published January 9, 2020

About the author

Billy O'Callaghan was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1974. His books include the short story collections: In Exile (2008, Mercier Press), In Too Deep (2008, Mercier Press), and The Things We Lose, the Things We Leave Behind (2013, New Island Books/2017, CITIC Press, China); and a novel: The Dead House (2017, O'Brien Press/Arcade, USA).

His breakthrough novel, My Coney Island Baby, was published in 2019 by Jonathan Cape (UK, Ireland & the Commonwealth) and Harper (USA), as well as in translation by Grasset (France), Ambo Anthos (the Netherlands), btb Verlag (Germany), Paseka (Czech Republic), Ediciones Salamandra (Spain), L’Altra Editorial (Catalonia), Jelenkor (Hungary), Guanda (Italy) and Othello (Turkey). The novel was also shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award.

A new short story collection, The Boatman, and Other Stories was published in 2020 by Jonathan Cape (UK) and Harper Perennial (USA), and is forthcoming from btb Verlag (Germany) and Sefsafa (Egypt - Arabic).

His novel, Life Sentences, published to critical acclaim by Jonathan Cape in 2021, and reached #3 Irish fiction bestsellers list. 'Life Sentences' was published in the US by David R. Godine as well as on audiobook by Blackstone, as well as in Czech translation by Paseka, in Croatian by Petrine Knjige, in Farsi by Rahetalaei, and in French by Christian Bourgois. The French edition was shortlisted for the Prix Littéraire UIAD and the Littératures Européennes Cognac Prix du Lecteurs. An edition of the book is also forthcoming from btb Verlag (Germany) in April 2025).

His work has been recognised with numerous honours, including Bursary Awards for Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland and the Cork County Council, a Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Award, as well as being shortlisted for Encore Award and Costa Short Story Award shortlistings, and his short stories have appeared in more than 100 magazines and literary journals around the world, including: Agni, the Bellevue Literary Review, the Chattahoochee Review, Fiction Magazine, the Kenyon Review, the London Magazine, the Massachusetts Review, Narrative, Ploughshares, Salamander, the Saturday Evening Post, the Stinging Fly and Winter Papers.

His latest novel, The Paper Man, was published in May 2023 by Jonathan Cape (UK) & Godine (USA), and as an audiobook by Blackstone. It has also been translated into Czech, published by Paseka.

Reviews

[Kevin Ansbro · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Because in the end there's always death, and always broken hearts. Happy stories, at least, get to hold the air of magic."
—Billy O'Callaghan


Brilly Billy O'Callaghan has an all-seeing eye and a poet's soul. In this poignant collection of short stories, he uses symbolism and metaphor to great effect while exploring themes of love (though never the romantic kind). He writes about the love that invites death; forbidden love; doomed love; lost love; unrequited love, and the raw, heartbreaking desolation of love.
There is an immediacy to O'Callaghan's words; he finds grandeur in the prosaic and his evocative descriptions of limitless Irish skies and etched landscapes are a thing of unfading beauty.
To further enhance my reading fun, I entered into a three-way buddy read with Australian possums, Nat and Neale, with whom I would heartily and unequivocally advocate a readage à trois.

Back to Brilly Billy, who not only has his finger on the human pulse but is also a master at capturing moments in time and filming them with words.
In truth, not all of the stories were feathered with excellence. There were a few stocking fillers (even in the claustrophobic confines of a short story, I would still prefer a narrative arc). But this didn't detract from the high quality of the collection as a whole.
My favourite tales were 'The Boatman' (it really floated my boat, man), 'Love is Strange', and the cinematic 'Last Christmas' (such a clever piece; an author fond of feeding the reader with enough prompts for them to be able to write their own endings).

I was first encouraged to read this superb anthology by Cheri's acclamatory review. Check it out...
Cheri's review
Neale's review
Nat's review


This is a compelling collection of thought-provoking reads made all the more enjoyable by sharing the experience with my wonderful Aussie amigos (my vote for *star reader* goes to Nat for exhibiting a prescience that would have bested Nostradamus). We didn't always concur, but all agreed that this was a meritorious read!
Recommended for anyone with a library in their heart and Guinness in their veins 4.5 stars

[Angela M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fell in love with Billy O’Callagan’s writing and story telling when I read My Coney Island Baby. When I had the opportunity to read an advanced copy of his new collection of stories, I couldn’t pass it up. Story collections are sometimes hard to rate because it’s not often that every story is a perfect one for me. This was the case here, but I had no problem with giving this 5 stars because even though I didn’t connect fully with every one of the twelve stories here, the writing is beautiful throughout and all of the stories touched me in some way. O’Callaghan takes you to different places, depicts different circumstances in different character’s lives, but always bringing you to the same place, a shared humanity of what it means to experience the depth of love, of loss, tragedy, loneliness, the meaning in relationships, especially marriage. With a couple of exceptions, most of the stories are about couples as they forge their way through their lives together. Coming of age is a theme reflected in two of the stories with the experience of things difficult for adults to bear. Of the twelve, there were a few that touched me deeply and moved me to tears, not just for what the characters experienced, but for the way this author brought their emotions directly to my core as I read and sometimes reread. I’m not going to give any detail of the stories because I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone who has not read it and plans to. But I will mention those that I couldn’t stop thinking about : The Boatman, Ruins, The Aftermath, A Death in the Family. This perhaps was not the best choice to read at this time, as I’m dealing with personal loss and the pandemic we are all dealing with, but I still recommend it highly. I will definitely get to the other works by O’Callaghan at some point.


I received an advanced copy of this book from HarperCollins through Edelweiss.

[Cecily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quiet tragedy often hides in the comfort blanket we mislabel “contentment”.
Yet beauty can reside amid more obviously painful and viscerally horrific tragedies.
These 12 stories deftly, sometimes agonising, but always exquisitely, explore both sorts of tragedy.
Melancholy seeps through the pages like Irish mist.
But they’re enfolded in the natural beauty of the world around - a counterpoint to pain.

Ultimately, the tales are life-affirming, even as the tears fall (and they did in one).

There are no sneaky twists; just subtle foreboding and a sprinkling of hints at what’s to come, yet expectations don’t soften what occurs.
Much is unsaid, unknown: read between the lines to know the heart.
Each story reveals itself slowly, modestly, organically, like a shy child in a school play or a fern in spring.
Sometimes, the “reveal” is almost nothing, and yet that “nothing” is everything.
"Sometimes plot is the very least of what constitutes substance."


Image: Fern unfolding (Source.)

The stories explore different sorts of love, loss, and loss of love itself. Guilt, blame, and regret as well. Lots of loss, especially of children (trigger warning). However, it’s more about the aftermath than gory details. Love of a child, an unborn child, an unconceived child, a parent, a partner, hope, trust, one’s youth, one’s ideals, or one’s dream. Two are horror stories, though there’s nothing supernatural about either: horror wrought by nature’s brutality, and psychological horror. Ten are set in rural Ireland in 20th or 21st century. The others are in Paris and Segovia, with another having backstory in Taiwan.

“I saw the etchings of mistakes and the creases and marbling of disappointment… the crowding shadows of chances taken and missed.”

The message I took is to notice and appreciate what I have. More than appreciate: relish and nurture relationships while I can, even imperfect ones. But continue to dream and strive as well. It’s oft-said that grief is the price of love, and anyone who has loved deeply then lost, knows it’s worth that price, despite the later agony.

The words themselves are plain, but their combinations are alchemy: I was bewitched, then immersed between the leaves. O'Callaghan reconfirms his place among my favourite authors.

The stories - no spoilers

1. The Border Fox, 4*
The first sentence is typical O’Callaghan:
“...The cold dawn air smoked to every torn breath.”
However, the subject makes this a brave opening salvo for a collection. O’Callaghan isn’t condoning anything. Instead, he’s humanising the main character to help readers understand: to see similarity where we would otherwise see only difference.

2. The Boatman, 4*
The 2016 Costa Short Story Award runner-up. A man is confronting “another dropped stitch in the tapestry of our island”. Guilt at his inability to show emotions is mitigated by following familiar patterns: recalling a well-loved, newly pertinent story and practising the local rituals of life - and death. Be rooted in your birthplace, but let your branches flutter in the breeze from other lands.
You can watch and listen to O'Callaghan reading this story HERE. It's 25 minutes. There is some wind noise in the mic during the first few minutes, but then he moves to a quieter corner. There are also brief strains of music and video of local scenes and scenery.

3. Ruins, 6*
“The tide comes in and then recedes, and we stand and wait for it to come again. So much of life is waiting, but even ruined as we are, waiting at least makes room for dreams.”
From frenetic Taiwan to a silent stone circle in rural Ireland. Reaching out. Holding on. I wept.

Image: Ancient stone circle of Gougane/Gugán Barra, near Kealkill (I think!) (Source.)

4. Beginish, 5*
“The water ahead of them was a bed of light: pale blue in the distance beneath an only slightly deeper and immaculately unblemished sky but in close a shimmering white fire so brilliant that it branded echoes of itself into their vision.”
The start of a newlywed couple’s dream, on Beginish, the smallest of the Blasket islands.

5. Love is Strange, 4*
“I suppose endings only reveal themselves with hindsight.”
A brilliantly understated look at three crucial years as Sam, the narrator moves from boy to man, from his helpful fondness of an elderly spinster to leaving school, starting work, and dating a girl his own age. Very little happens, but like his older sister’s stories that always “dropped away only half told”, there is power in that.

6. A Sense of Rain, 3*
“We needed Paris now in a way we hadn’t then.”
The only O’Callaghan story I’ve read that didn’t work for me. You learn a little about Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne along the way.

7. Wildflowers, 4*
“He was who he had always been, in one breath an old man, in the next still very much a boy, and he kept his losses close because time’s barriers were soft.”
Another tender introspection into aging (like Love is Strange), but this time from middle age, which makes it sadder, as the narrator acknowledges where love falls short. But contentment doesn’t necessarily require the fresh joy of youthful love.

8. Segovia, 5*
“Buildings converged, the streets narrowing and heightening to a claustrophobic sepia.”
We learn a little backstory of one character (even less of the other, who explicitly says “Don’t ask everything of me. I am not a book for you.”), nothing much happens, and there are few hints about what the future holds for either of them in the next hour, let alone week or years. It could be exasperating and pointless, but instead it’s utterly infused with place, time, and feelings, extruding universal truths from unshed tears.
“Stillness filled the afternoon with disquiet, their suffocating blaze lengthening interminably the sense of solitude.”


Image: Street in Segovia (Source.)

9. The Aftermath, 5*
This was hard to read. The initial setting is sordid, and something is not quite “right”, but there is tenderness too. As the situation gradually became clear, its true horror was revealed.

10. Fine Feathers, 4*
A writer notices the magpies’ awareness of each, even when apart:
“As if they are seeing from the same eyes, feeling the trembling of the air through the same set of feathers.”
How different humans are, sometimes wilfully:
“Ignorance is too often the better and easier bliss. Details barely registered in the moment have this peculiar and disquieting way of resonating later on… each a colour or a brushstroke, however minimal, in the portrait or landscape that we paint”

11. Last Christmas, 4*
A man driving home witnesses a crying child cut free of car wreckage. It will be his first Christmas with his wife, “knowing that whatever we had was only just beginning” – for them.

12. A Death in the Family, 4*
At 35 pages, this is the longest. I read and reviewed it a couple of years ago, HERE.

Quotes – water, weather, light

• “The peppered light of dusky, wet October.”

• “A skin of translucent cloud draped the distance ahead, skirting the climbing sun.”

• “The darkness of the small hours still as thick as blankets around them.”

• “There were no sounds apart from the frothy coughing of the waves breaking against the reefs.”

• “The sky was falling gentle now as feathers.”

• “And just then, for barely and instant, something shifted inside the day, the slightest waning, the insinuation of a shadow. For that heartbeat, the water lost the apex sharpness of its glimmer and turned instead steely, and the heat within the day grew overwhelming.”

• “Dead leaves… whisper and crunch beneath our feet; the stripped branches, tangled together above us, intensified the gold-white stabs of penetrating light.”

• “The evening had turned languid and the dead smut of earlier rain cloud lingered now as only a memory in the east.”

• “Evening… clotted with birdsong.”

Quotes – emotions

• “M weeps, haemorrhaging tears… the broken-hearted heave punching through her thin body.”

• “It’s as if I’ve been set down on a jut of reef in the middle of the sea, some small hard rock with bottomless water a step away in every direction, and there is nothing I can do but stand and watch while others around me struggle to stay afloat and wile my betters sink and drown.”

• “Our dead are at once gone and everywhere.”

• “Here, on the island, digging is in itself a kind of prayer.”

• “I’d seen her in a few different beds during our broken time together, and I’d never come away unmarked from the melancholy of our aftermaths.”

• “When all is already lost it is natural to want to focus only on the contours and colours of the moment.”

• “Regret… was a far greater burden to bear than guilt. Guilt hadn’t the permanence of regret, and could be kissed and laughed away… You indulge in guilt but live with regret.”

• “Keeping our promise meant condemning ourselves to a famished life… committing to a delusion.”

• “He and M were easy with one other. Love wasn’t a word that generally entered their equation, though only because there’d been someone else, a long time ago, and he found it hard to give away again what had already been given once and broken. But then he hadn’t been M’s first choice either, and in time they’d both come to understand that love wasn’t everything.”

• “I am not blameless… Because I saw only what I wanted to see… It’s human nature to project, and to fall in love with fantasies… We set ourselves up for the drop.”

• “You piece things back together as best you can and learn to live with the cracks.”

• “The heart wants what it wants, but will often learn to settle for what it can get.”

Quotes - other

• “The eye… still full of glimpsed horror and gleaming like rain on glass.”

• “His voice was soft, thickened by whispers, as if he’d been too long around sick people.”

• “I slip into the tallow bloom of my own old age.”

• “Stillness filled the afternoons with disquiet, their suffocating blaze lengthening interminably the sense of solitude.”

More

I've reviewed all O'Callaghan's books on this shelf.

[Nat K · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The heart can want what it wants, but will often learn to settle for what it can get."

I cannot begin to unfurl my thoughts coherently about this collection of beautifully written short stories.

These stories were to me, like being asked to select your favourite colour from a palette of hues which you adore. How to choose? When each one speaks to you in a different way.

I really have to thank the wonderful Kevvy Ansbro for introducing me to a writer that has become a new favourite. I read this book with Kevvy and Collin, and it was a joy to discover so many nuances in the writing. Often we had different perspectives for the same story, which to me is the mark of a great storyteller; that no two (or three!) people will get the same meaning from the one story. Some of them meant different things to each of us. But we all three agreed that his writing is second to none.

"It’s possible that different places wear different faces for different people."

Billy O'Callaghan captures the human condition and our frailties in a myriad of splinters that will get under your skin.

He shows an innate wisdom, a knowingness of human nature. Longing, loneliness, fear, wanting, hurt...these are themes repeated throughout this collection. Grief, dealing with grief. Guilt and healing. There is also love. Though usually it is the loss or betrayal of love that is displayed. It is never straightforward.

Nature is a huge theme throughout. The sea, the sun, the rain. The change of seasons. The beauty of wildflowers. We have cityscapes, countryside and a wild island as our places of residence in these stories.

Each has a quality to them that made me ponder. They each captured a moment in people’s lives with sharp focus. A snapshot capture in time. You can feel the emotions the characters are going through. Though only twelve stories, and not particularly long in length, I simply could not rush them. I needed to take my time, and absolutely lose myself in what I was reading.

As Collin says in his review ” Please forgive me, I could go on quoting the whole book…”, and I couldn’t agree more. There is just so much to be impressed with and impacted by in this collection.

Favourites for me were “Beginish”,” Segovia” & “Aftermath”, with the standout being “A Sense of Rain”.

Visceral, violent, “Beginish” will have you feeling the salt of the seawater on your skin. A holiday in the sun goes horribly wrong for two lovebirds. Paradise turns to hell. Utterly tumultuous, I felt like I was in the eye of the storm reading this.

"It’s a good little island, all things considered. Beginish. Even the name is nice to say."

" ‘I wish this could last forever,’ she sighed, without opening her eyes. ‘Isn’t it just perfect?’ "
- Beginish

In “Segovia”, two strangers meet in a bar in Spain. They discover they share a depth of sadness. A man. A woman. Different generations. Both lonely and alone. Making tentative steps towards a new friendship.

"Being with someone at first is like a slow dance. You are conscious of every moment, and of taking a wrong step."

" 'So what brings you to Segovia?'
'Oh, the same as you. Fairy tales.'"
- Segovia

“Aftermath” was an usual story, in that the way the scenes were painted, I could imagine this being performed on stage. It was like each scene had definite borders around it. Another couple dealing (or not dealing) with grief in their lives. A deeply traumatic event that they're trying to claw their way back from. With mixed results.

"You may need to check your expectations. I know it’s hard to hear but what’s past really might be gone. And sometimes, what we have now is what there is. What’s most important is your recovery."

"I don’t know. Life happens. It’s not about blame. Can you remember anything at all from that night?"
- Aftermath

For me, the absolute standout was “A Sense of Rain”. On finishing it, it left me with the simple thought “sigh”. A gentle tale filled with such sadness in Paris, the City of Lights. A couple are trying to make sense of a recent bereavement, and to reconnect. Rather than visit a museum displaying (the painter) Modigliani’s works, Ellie feels the need to visit the flat where Modigliani's young lover took her own life. Ellie's husband will do whatever it takes to help soothe her soul. To go wherever she wishes to go. This story affected me on so many levels. It is written so well that I could hear the swish of rain as the taxi’s wheels hit the road, taking them to their destination.

" She sighed. ‘My impression of Paris is always of rain. Why is that, do you suppose?’ "

" ‘Imagine,’ she said, as much to herself as to me, ‘Loving someone so much that there’s nothing left of life once they’ve gone. Surely love is only supposed to ask the best of us.’ "
- A Sense of Rain

While these tales have an undercurrent of melancholia running through them. I don't say this to scare potential readers away, far from it. Without being able to dig deep and reach into the absolute raw part of ourselves, we cannot better appreciate moments of joy.

It's always a feeling of wonder to discover a writer whose words resonate with you. Billy O'Callaghan writes with a simpatico that leaves you in no doubt that he has a depth of understanding of people and their emotions.

A very full 4.5 ✩ stars for me. I cannot recommend this highly enough, both for fans of the short story genre, and for those who think this genre may not be for them. Read it and get carried away, into other people’s lives.

I have to admit to feeling kind of sad that I have finished it. It would be nice to have a book that just continues to replenish itself with new stories, when it's as beautiful as this one.

*** A shout out to the delightful Kevvy, who suggested this title as our first Bookage à trois, which we read with the equally delightful and talented Mr.Neale-ski. It was the most sublime choice. Please have a look at their reviews, which are as wonderful as they are…

Kevvy’s review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Neale’s review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ***

[Cheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Twelve stories that will take you to Paris, to Spain, Taipei, and, of course, to Ireland, as well as taking you back and forth through time, examining such themes as grief, love, fear, choice, loss, heartbreak, consequences, along with the wonders, as well as the sometimes unexpected brutalities, of life.

These days, it seems that less-than-happy news is almost constant, so this quote from the title story, The Boatman really spoke to me.

’As I age, I find myself favouring novels and stories that I know will end happily, not because that makes them more believable but because the very inverse of that is true, because their sense of reality softens and they again get to be something more than the world as it has shown itself to me. Not bad all the way to is core and rarely intentionally so, not without its beautiful moments, but neither naturally set up, it seems, for happy endings. Because in the end there’s always death, and always broken hearts. Happy stories, at least, get to hold the air of magic.’

And even though not all of these stories have happy endings, there’s so much beauty in the way that O’Callaghan shares them that, at least for me, they always hold that air of magic. A magic to soften the twists and turns of life, a beacon of light to remind us that we are not alone in our struggles and sorrows, that we are all small against the world.


Published: 28 April 2020

Many thanks for the ARC provided by HarperCollinsPublishers / Harper Perrenial

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I feel as if I have died a thousand times myself, and that I’ve known a thousand lives other than this one. Maybe it’s just that we are all the same, and perhaps we each get a turn at everything, until we understand”.

These stories are very sad...

“The funeral is set for eleven but we know that the priest will wait for us, everyone will wait, because waiting is part of it, too, just as much as prayers. Here, on the island, digging is in itself a kind of prayer, and even though weariness eats into us and turns our bones to lead, we won’t stop until we finish the work”.

Yep.... so very very sad!
I’m reminded that grief isn’t linear.... it circles back around many times.

Love and incapacitating loss insidiously erodes the fabric of our lives.

.... bereavement, love, loss, death, regret, reoccurring memories loneliness....
such an emotional collection of stories.

Blessings and thanks of gratitude to Billy O’Callaghan....
....a supremely talented writer... portraying clear visual images of painful truths ... taking us into our minds, heart, and soul.

[Zoeytron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life demands change.  Lives set adrift by grief, now out of balance from the loss.  The perfection of love, and its inevitable perils.  Thirsts that cannot be quenched.  Crying for things that cannot be changed.  What is left behind when a person's mind breaks?

Twelve short stories by the author who penned My Coney Island Baby.  Once I started reading, these stories crept into my heart and set up house.  O'Callaghan's words lent a beauty to the pain, leaving behind a melancholy that has yet to fade.  My favorites were Aftermath, Beginish, and Wildflowers.  I haven't been able to bring myself to start another book quite yet.

[Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to several of my Goodreads buddies, Billy O’Callaghan has been on my radar for a while. I read his My Coney Island Baby last year, and I knew I’d have to read all his books.

The Boatman and Other Stories is his newest. The stories are about human strength amid grief, loss, and trauma. O’Callaghan’s writing is quiet and packs a punch with the emotion. It’s exactly my favorite kind of prose, and I hope you’ll check it out if this type of storytelling appeals to you, too!

I received a gifted copy. All opinions are my own.

Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader

[Cecily · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully-written collection of often melancholy stories. I've written a detailed review of the whole collection HERE.

Watch Billy reading the title story HERE.
Listening to his thick Cork accent took it to a new and richer level, embellished by brief strains of music and video of local scenes and scenery. Don't be put off by occasional wind noise in the mic during the first few minutes; he moves to a quieter corner. It's only 25 minutes.

[Paula K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like many friends on Goodreads, I have become a big fan of Irish author, Billy O’Callaghan. His prose is so poetic. He writes about ordinary life and human nature like no other.

The Boatman and Other Stories is a collection of 12 short stories. All are about grief, the loss of love, sadness, or fear, but written with such beautiful prose that you can’t get enough. Each of O’Callaghan’s tales give an atmospheric sense of surroundings where you feel you are there. Most are set in Ireland, but a few are elsewhere. His portrayal of nature’s beauty makes you shiver. I never get tired of hearing about the sea with it’s perils and allure. A sense of foreboding and melancholy does permeate through O’Callaghan’s writing.

Out of the 12 stories, “Beginish” set on an isolated island with stranded newlyweds, was the one that got to me the most, but all are so well done.

A lovely narrator’s brogue made the audiobook such a good choice…

I also highly recommend the author’s first novel, The Dead House. A beautifully written ghost story set in a remote part of Ireland.

5 out of 5 stars

[Dolors · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some authors crawl under your skin, sinking in so deep that they stay embedded within you long after you’ve read them. That’s the case with Billy O’Callaghan and this speechless reader. Several years have passed since I read Billy’s first collection of short stories but as soon as I turned the first page of his new book I felt myself back home after a long and not always pleasant journey.

Billy’s voice is impossible to forget, and his tone, as I could almost hear him speaking as I carefully went through these twelve stories, is as calm as it is elegiac, bringing you down on your knees on the shore of the fluid and volatile sea of memories, loss and love. His prose sways you in and out, rocking you gently but relentlessly towards a conclusion that is seldom easy to digest. As it happens in life.
Death is the uninvited presence in every story. Accidents, missed opportunities, illnesses and the burden of old age may take the center of the stage, but it is death that lurks beneath the surface, ready to leap on the reader at any given moment, reminding him of his fragility, of the insignificance of life.

How can something so terrible be so rewarding to read?
In the answer you’ll discover Billy’s magnificence.
The magic of his apparently understated prose is overwhelming. Poetry flows through his pen naturally, unstoppable, every penned sentence, a marvel to cherish. Hence, horrifying situations such as burying your own child, losing your beloved one in a tragic accident or remembering traumatic events of years past when one is facing the inevitable outcome of old age can become quiet stories of daily heroism, of gentle, unequalled beauty.
Because the magic of Billy’s prose fights off the ghosts of death, heartache and grief with the purest kind of love. Love of the brief time we are given, love of the brutality of nature, invoking a kind of power as blind and fierce as the love a mother feels for her newly born. Invincible. Innocent. Irradiating.
Billy’s heritage comes in whispers from Irish myths and legends, and his stories go beyond the written word. They are paeans to the ordinary people who brave the darkest side of life with the flickering flame of love, casting eternal light among the shadows. Pass on his stories, read and re-read and cherish them to keep the uniqueness of his prose alight.

[Neale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buddy read with Nat K and Kev Ansbro.

“The Boatman and Other Stories” is the first taste I have had of Billy O’Callaghan’s writing. This collection of twelve short stories was Kevin Ansbro’s pick in a buddy read with me and Nat K. I am counting myself extremely lucky that we went with this book because I simply love O’Callaghan’s writing.

The twelve short stories all share the common theme of grief. Grief in its many forms and levels. Grief that is so overpowering that one cannot go on living. To more subtle, but debilitating grief. They also portray the different ways people cope, or fail to cope, with grief.

As with all collections of short stories there are always going to be some stories that stand out, shine brighter, than others. But there is one element that is consistent throughout all twelve and that is the beautiful prose of O’Callaghan. He has this wonderful ability, this talent, to take what is, in its most basic form, a slice of the life, a snapshot of ordinary people from all walks of life, just living, and with this book grieving, and make it a joy to read.

“As I age, I find myself favouring novels and stories that I know will end happily, not because that makes them more believable but because the very inverse of that is true, because their sense of reality softens and they again get to be something more than the world as it has shown itself to me. Not bad all the way to its core and rarely intentionally so, not without its beautiful moments, but neither naturally set up, it seems, for happy endings. Because in the end there’s always death, and always broken hearts. Happy stories, at least, get to hold the air of magic.”

“mumbling the catholic prayers that we’d all been taught by heart, the strings of words in two languages and stripped of meaning or worth in either one.”

“Being with someone at first is like a slow dance. You are conscious of every moment, and of taking a wrong step.”

“Buildings converged, the streets narrowing and heightening to a claustrophobic sepia, and the ground, lined in ancient, broken cobble, put up a severe challenge even to her low-heeled sandals.”

Please forgive me I could go on quoting the whole book, just one more, my favourite,

“Silk, of a shade of red that at this hour is just another shadow. Like blood in a black-and-white movie.”

Yes indeed, if you are a fan of beautiful prose you will probably enjoy the collection simply for the writing. However, there are some brilliant little gems tucked away between the covers.

My favourites chopped and changed as I progressed through the stories but the second story, “The Boatman” is gut wrenching and heart breaking. Yet at the same time equally beautiful. It is four in the morning and a boatman prepares to dig the grave and bury his daughter. He is lost, he describes the house as a hole that his wife has fallen in and he is clinging to the edge.

“Beginish” is perhaps the darkest story when a happy love story turns into a hellish nightmare. A couple decide to spend some time together on a small inland island. Mother Nature turns this little holiday into chaos. You can almost feel the rain slashing your face with this one.

If I had to pick a favourite it would be “Love is Strange”. A young boy named Sam shows his empathy and decency as he always leaves whatever games he and his friends are playing to help a lonely old lady with her groceries. He ignores the constant jibes and ribbing he receives from his friends. This relationship reminded me of the one in Ali Smith’s Autumn, compacted into a short story. There is a beautiful powerful message that goes with this story, but I will leave that for you dear reader.

I will also leave some of the other stories for Nat K and Kevvy to fill you in on, as they inevitably do a much better job than me. But I will mention “Wildflowers” because I think they found it a little boring. The narrative is about a man who visits his mother each day and brings her this bunch of wildflowers that he has picked up on a whim. It is the understated narrative that allows O’Callaghan’s prose to shine again. I believe the flowers are a metaphor for his aging mother. Just as the flowers age and wilt with time, he notices his mother’s face thinning her posture wilting and drooping.

Well we have racked up nearly ninety posts discussing this book and it has been immense fun discussing it with two of my best mates on goodreads.

Thanks guys, please make sure to check out their reviews when they post them.

4.5 Stars!

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

O' Callaghan offers us this stunning collection of a dozen stories which is meant to be slowly savored, not guzzled. You'll want to read this slowly without skimming and try to capture each sentence. That's the talent on display here - a talent for conveying even the tiniest of details, those details that give meaning to moments such as the smell of the earth, the hidden birthmark ("I know the chocolate thumbprint birthmark high up on the inside of her right thigh"), the sounds. The stories run the gamut of the human condition, ranging from the never ending loss a couple feels burying their child to the betrayal of a spouse to the little things that romance makes us think of to the thought of eternal abandonment on a lonely island off the Irish coast. "Everyone is marked in permanent ways, and those marks might make us ugly to some eyes but they don’t stop us from living."

How does a couple deal with loss? "Now the house around us feels like a hole. She has fallen in and is still falling, and I am clinging to an edge. Everything that has gone before seems redundant now, all the efforts at survival, the love, the wasted laughter. Beth has cleaved us entirely open in her going. Without her, Margaret and I are nothing but collections of bones, emptied of worth." Wow. Captured so well.

And a long distance relationship:
"Then her eyes, the colour of a honeycomb’s core at that hour, opened wide again and this time fixed on some distant thought, maybe of all the sad mornings that lay ahead for us, after we’d once more taken up our separate fates."

Of a broken heart: "Because this, as anyone who has ever had their heart broken by love knows, is how it has to be. The tide comes in and then recedes, and we stand and wait for it to come again. So much of life is waiting, but even ruined as we are, waiting at least makes room for dreams".

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

O'Callaghan's prose is so lush and beautiful that I don't ever want to leave its realm.
This collection of 12 short stories tells tales of love and loss and the resiliency of the human spirit.
O'Callaghan is a keen observer of people and also of the natural world.
Each story touched me in some way; for me this emotional connection is the hallmark of a good story.
I am thrilled to have read yet another dazzling collection as I embrace short stories this year.

[Fictionophile · Rating 5 out of 5]

Twelve outstanding and often poignant stories from one of Ireland's master storytellers. The stories cover a wide range of topics, but many deal with tragic situations, regret, death, and loss.

My favourite story in the collection was "Beginish", a tragic tale that because of its imagery, will remain with me for a long, long, time.

When I find myself constantly highlighting passages when I am reading, I always know that I'm indulging in high quality, literary fiction.

Highly recommended to all those who enjoy reading meaningful prose in a short story format.

[Cathrine ☯️ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4+ ★★★★
A remarkable, and very Irish collection of short stories from a most talented writer; some of them 5 star worthy.
They were poignant, melancholy and sad, true to life, love and loss.
They also inspired rewarding engagement in this month's buddy read feedback with Carmel, Kathleen, and Diane. 🥰

[Carmel Hanes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of twelve powerful short stories, the second or third I've tried. I might be a convert to this genre...or maybe I'm a convert to certain authors who do this really well. It's hard to pull off great characterization and any sense of plot in a few pages, but O'Callaghan is a master. Stark and spare, each vignette offers a focused slice of life infused with the sadly true ties that bind us; or that break, setting us adrift.

These are not happy stories (some are truly gut-punching), but they represent events and struggles that are so common to us all that we can't help but resonate with the plight of the characters. O'Callaghan's prose is pitch perfect and subtly beautiful. His vivid descriptions of people, places and things are proof of the magical intersection of his observational skills and prowess with language.

I did not love every story equally, but I found value in them all, and those I loved made the entire collection worth reading. The stories were enhanced further by discussing them with buddies during this group read (thanks Cathrine, Diane and Kathleen!).

[Michael McLellan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The prose here is exceptional, maybe even brilliant, but I feel that some of the stories in this collection got a bit lost inside of it. I'm definitely a Billy O'Callaghan fan now.

[Claire Fullerton · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's daunting to think that no matter how I review this exceptional collection of short stories by Billy O'Callaghan, I will never adequately express my full sentiments, for how to articulate that O'Callaghan is simply the best writer I've come across in ages? His short stories are a treatise on the human experience, the impressionable psyche, the vulnerable human heart. He crafts his stories with the fluidity of a wave that builds slowly, crests, then turns in on itself after enveloping sight and sight unseen. To read The Boatman and Other Stories is to read a master at his craft. You'll be swept away by the rich detail and nuance of commonplace in the hands of this powerful storyteller. I cannot recommend this collection hardily enough. Read it, treasure it, then do as I did and put it in pride of place on your bookshelf.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

This is my first acquaintance will Billy O'Callaghan and his perfectly beautiful writing. The descriptions are so detailed and well articulated, that I can clearly see, feel, taste and smell the surroundings.
This collection of twelve short stories have a common thread of relationships, choices and sadness. Death, loss, grief, loneliness and consequences are also visited.

THE BORDER FOX
On his first time crossing over the border into the North, young Seamus killed a man. He thought of a fox he had seen at a drag hunt and then compared a girl to the fox.

'It's possible that places wear different faces for different people...'

'The rust-flash of its body held like firelight against the blue-white landscape, the outstanding colour in the day, and I'd been young but not so young that I couldn't sense the transcendence of the moment, the raw and terrible beauty of nature at full stretch. And in the upstairs of the pub, only hours earlier, the girl had shone in much the same way, lustrous and as wild. Campfire embers. She'd watched from across the room, knowing from the overheard whispers who I was or was trying to be, why I'd come here and what I had committed myself to do; and her smile, when she caught me looking, had the flashing dance of that fox in for flight, a high breathless thing, alive with the terror of its own tease.'

'Everyone is marked in permanent ways, and those marks might make us ugly to some eyes but they don't stop us from living.
I've been to the North on several occasions since but, when I think about that first time, my clearest recollection is how the girl's hair had shone, the same way tree sap does in sunlight. And I remember how her smile had at once excited and troubled me...Her eyes were green and daring, young as spring but somehow full of winter, too knowing of long nights.'

'she took me by the hand and led me outside...so that we could be animals together, red and wild.'

THE BOATMAN
This story tells of a fisherman and wife whose young daughter has suddenly died. He knows what he should do to comfort his wife, but finds that he is too grief stricken to do it.

'Now the house around us feels like a hole. She has fallen in and is still falling, and I am clinging to an edge. Everything that has gone before seems redundant now, all the efforts at survival, the love, the wasted laughter. Beth has cleaved us entirely open in her going. Without her, Margaret and I are nothing but collections of bones, emptied of worth.'

'... another dropped stitch in the tapestry of our island.'

'I have always enjoyed reading, but it is a pleasure that has deepened in recent years.… As I age, I find myself favouring novels and stories that I know will end happily, not because that makes them more believable but because the very inverse of that is true, because their sense of reality softens and they again get to be something more than the world as it has shown itself to me. Not bad all the way to its core and rarely intentionally so, not without its beautiful moments, but neither naturally set up, it seems, for happy endings. Because in the end there's always death, and always broken hearts. Happy stories, at least, get to hold the air of magic.'

'When you don't fear death then you fear nothing. Except maybe living. And when you can simply exist, in full acceptance of your lot, then you are immense. Fear is what brings us down and make small things of us.'

'For several seconds everything is blackness and gold, and it is almost impossible to focus, but then I nod my head, accept the outstretched hand and let myself be hauled back into the world.'

'In the boatman, I recognized patience, stoicism, a propensity for silence, a certain hardness from a life spent bearing pain, and an innate understanding of the witchery that processes those who balance their lives on something bottomless and who can accept the floating existence of a life on the water as akin to flying, feeling that same melding sense of the precarious and the euphoric and waiting always for the fall.'

'Every drop of the ocean is itself but it's also the ocean.'

RUINS
'Her life, even after I'd been allowed inside, was all about walls, and the room she kept for me was exclusive to us but also confined to moments.'

'I'd sit there, like a dead tree in a wide field, all stillness and hanging limbs, and cling to the fact that feeling pain was at least still feeling.'

'As people, we understand when the best has already been and gone, and all the remains to us are shadows. But we have to make the best of things.'

'Regret...was a far greater burden to bear than guilt. Guilt hadn't the permanence of regret, and could be kissed and laughed away.

That was the opportunity we'd had and not taken, and instead we came to understand the hard way that you indulge in guilt but live with regret, and it turns the taste of everything and makes you lonesome day and night.'

'Even without Mei in the room, her presence blocked out the space the way sand fills an hourglass, turning everything slow. That's how I wanted it to be, and that at least was what I'd have, but I knew from before, from having already lost her once, such ghosts tormented me as much as consoled.... keeping our promise meant condemning ourselves to a famished life, to the scraps that could nourish only the most fragile of hearts. In taking from a kind word and a smile far more than such gestures could ever truly give, we were committing to a delusion, but survival for most people owed an immense debt to lies, because the lies were what kept us all still swinging long after the fight was done.'

'... as anyone who has ever had their heart broken by love knows, is how it has to be. The tide comes in and then recedes, and we stand and wait for it to come again. So much of life is waiting, but even ruined as we are, waiting at least makes room for dreams.'

BEGINISH
Beginish started so happy with Isabelle and Thomas saving and planning and then making their dream come true. Then one wrong decision changed it all from a dream to a nightmare!

'everybody had to decide for themselves what happiness looked like.'

' Though she rarely gave credence to the existence of a God anymore, she'd often spent minutes of those bright, twilight dawns considering the convoluted hindsight destinies which had somehow steered them each across the other's path, and in that found herself allowing again for the possible existence of an Almighty. Even if her belief only ever held for those early minutes and was always quickly lost to the attrition of the rising day, the idea that life, in all its seeming confusion and turmoil, had already been mapped out ahead of them proved strangely comforting then, the assurance that nothing was quite as random as it seemed and that there really was some greater purpose to it all. Now, again, she clung to such a notion, and insisted to herself that if fate truly was for anything more than fairy tales then there was no way that this could be the end, because what God would take the trouble to design something as complex as a life, with all its forked paths and unpredictable intersections, simply for it to run such a futile course? No, this wouldn't be the finish; there'd be more to come, and in time they'd look back and laugh about or at least roll their eyes over such folly.'

'... her tendency was to live either among memories of days that had passed or in fantasies about what might lie ahead, and always at a cost of the true moment.'

'As everything turned real, she wept, on and on until dawn...minutes passed soundless except for the inner sobbing of a tide and the remembered promises of his hushed voice breezing against her skin when he brought himself to her with all his uttered talk of love and beauty, all the gasping assurances of forever, and all words that left her carved open and hollowed with despair.'

LOVE IS STRANGE
In spite of being teased thirteen-year-old Sam habitually helped the seventy-some-year-old woman, Miss Reilly carry her bags. He 'simply liked being around her. She interested me[him] and I[he] enjoyed her company.'

'If she was a parcel of blood and bones now then she still contained a wealth of thoughts, fears and memories, and maybe old laughter, too. I had a sense that time...was full in ways I couldn't yet begin to know. When I looked I saw the etchings of mistakes, and the creases and marbling of disappointment, but when I peered close I also saw past them to the crowding shadows of chances taken and missed.'

'What we say isn't always what we mean, especially to loved ones.'

'...endings only reveal themselves with the benefit of hindsight.'

'Life isn't easy for anyone...We each have our own set of problems. We're all small against the world.'

'Love shouldn't be anybody's business...what lives between two people doesn't belong to anyone else. And maybe we don't always have to understand what it's about.'

A SENSE OF RAIN
'My impression of Paris is always of rain. This is the season for Paris...Rain suits this place.'
'Everything is so beautiful, the river shining with the cities lights, and all the lovers, young and old alike, strolling hand-in-hand or folding into one another on benches, kissing. And yet still, the sense of rain.'

'Life is always hard, isn't it? No matter what you get, there's always some precious piece either missing or soon to be taken away.'

'Imagine,' she said...'loving someone so much that there's nothing left of life once they've gone. Surely love is only supposed to ask the best of us.'

I appreciated the thoughtful listening, watching and caring the husband showed for his wife in Paris on their anniversary. She was still grieving several months after a miscarriage and he went to great lengths to try to cheer her up. He seemed to truly love her.

WILDFLOWERS
This is one of my favourite stories from this collection. His visits with his aged mother are quiet times together and remind me of my visits with my grandmother. We would exchange a few pleasantries, but were also happy and content to just be together sitting in silence.

'...the lesson time and tide had taught him was that the sea went on without end, with neither bottom or sides. Beyond the horizon, there could only ever be more of the same.'

'Love wasn't a word that generally entered their equation, though only because there'd been someone else, a long time ago, and he found it hard to give away again what had already been given once and broken. But then he hadn't been Martha's first choice either, and in time they'd both come to understand that love wasn't everything. During the first few years, when so much still seemed possible, they made the best of their situation. Having no illusions simplified matters. They were partners, sharing the workload, surviving together. And it was good to have someone. Over the years, they'd learned one another's ways, and had each grown comfortable with how the other filled space and effected the silence... The heart wants what it wants, but will often learn to settle for what it can get.'

'... once all hope of a return was lost, gone became the same as dead. But the ghosts lingered.'
Thoughts and memories of his first love frequently visited him. His elderly mother had a lovely vivid dream of dancing and conversing with her dead husband.

'He could tell himself, and believe, that he was who he'd always been, in one breath an old man, in the next still very much a boy, and he kept his losses close because time's barriers were soft.'

O'Callaghan writes beautifully with descriptions so clear that you can easily picture them. Nature is often described in the stories.

'Late crocuses, violet and butter yellow, sprigs of bluebell, cerise and lily-white foxglove. The bluebells were beginning to wilt, but the bouquet as a whole had yet to lose its vibrancy, and instead of replacing or thinning the older blooms he simply added the new cuts to the mix.'

'Her face this past couple of years had begun caving in around the prod of bone, so that everything was becoming juts and hollows, her cheeks beneath their pointed ridges, her mouth between her chin and the long slender ridge of her nose…it seemed as if her bones were shrinking, leaving her skin, baked to hide and cobwebbed with creases, to sag in a mournful way...'

SEGOVIA
A woman leaving her partner of five years is travelling on her own in Spain.
She enters a bar in Segovia to get out of the heat and get a cold beer. The widower buys her a second beer and helps her find lodging for the night. When he invites her to join him later at the cafe for dinner, she says that she is tired and makes no promises.
She holds her stomach as if she has had a hysterectomy.

'We all have different needs.'

'The void that had defined her these past few months was swallowing everything.'

'Ever after is asking too much. Can a life without its downs as well as ups count as fully lived?...Being with someone at first is like a slow dance. You are conscious of every moment, and of taking a wrong step. For years, when you're alone, you are the person you think yourself to be. But love changed everything. You come to understand...that the other person makes you complete. Maybe it is because you have given away your heart. And once you've grown used to having them there, so close, their absence opens a hole that can never again be filled. You have to go on, of course, but you never quite regain your balance.'

'She wondered if there was an age when a person stopped being their mother's child and became entirely themselves, if the growing apart was not only natural but inevitable, even essential.'

'It's important to feel as if we matter, even when we no longer do.'

"She felt the ache to cry, but resisted giving in, having already cried too much for all the things she could not change.'

THE AFTERMATH
Nick and Lucy's four-and-a-half-years-old son was killed in an accident a little over two years ago. They are both grieving, but Lucy feels that she is to blame and is nothing. Nick is seeing a psychologist and wants to help his wife heal even though she feels the sorrow so much that she is in denial of being herself.

Nick asks Lucy, 'Do you feel nothing?...Are you so closed off that not even his photo can get to you? Because if that is true then there's no hope. All really is lost.'
'It is,' she says, with something like pity in her voice. 'And it's been lost a long time. You're the only one who couldn't see it.'

FINE FEATHERS
He enjoys watching the birds in his garden. While driving home from a party he and his beautiful wife are arguing. He is angry that she has betrayed him and that he saw the signs, but ignored them.

'The pair that visit my garden are mates. It's not even about affection between them, though there are demonstrations of that, in certain small ways. Their bond is revealed by how comfortable they are together, and how wholly accepting they are of that.'

'We're sponges, really. We soak up everything that happens, everything that's said and done and everything we say and hear, and we hold it in our hearts. And that can be a lot to bear. Ignorance is too often the better and easier bliss. Details barely registered in the moment have this peculiar and disquieting way of resonating later on, and to live again when we set our minds on them..'

'Nothing can heighten reality like the imagination.'

'... misreading is easy when the signs are leading you on, and it's human nature to project, and to fall in love with fantasies.'

'Betrayal is such a poisonous act, and it's a question of wanting to find a way on from it. The shards of what has been broken are scattered all around... you piece things back together as best you can, and learn to live with the cracks. You decide how much you can lose, and how much you can bear. That's what it's really all about: deciding. And putting a number on it, quantifying pain and measuring your threshold. We're each of us our mistakes as well as our virtues.'

'Tonight, all my fears are inside this house, and they live with me, but I still go through the usual motions. If I am honest with myself, I'll acknowledge this is how our marriage has always been. Love's got nothing to do with it.'

LAST CHRISTMAS
'There are times when denial is the only protection available to us.'

'Music has a way of attaching itself to particular and apparently random moments in time, sealing them into a permanent state.'

'That night, in the dancing reflections of the fairy lights, we sat holding hands and sipping mulled wine, knowing that whatever we had was only just beginning. Tomorrow, though, would be a new day, and next week a new year, and we both understood that things could change, whether we wanted them to or not.'

While driving, he witnessed a fatal car accident and it changed him. At home, his wife was still caught up in preparations for a Christmas celebration with friends and reluctantly sat beside him on the settee for a minute or two.

'I put my hand to the small of her back, but she either ignored it or had already grown so used to my touch that she did not react.'

A DEATH IN THE FAMILY
She is sixty-two and remembering when she was a young girl and her brother had a nasty fall and slowly died from the injuries.
'At sixty-two, I am already old. Brittle as the sticks we used to gather for kindling, voice careful now and full of draughts, skin like hide.'

'The past has become close enough to taste, to make a shape beneath my touch...I hear voices in my head, and if they are simply memories rather than ghosts then I also think they share an essence. Time passes but doesn't get far, and maybe for some of us, for those of us nearing our own precipice, the dead still sing.'

'He had such a roguish way of grinning, a mischievous, gap-toothed innocence that always made me want to play along and to adore him all the more.'

'For the days pass and never return, and the south still waits for you. Take the adventure, heed the call. 'Tis but a banging of the door behind you, and you are out of the old life and into the new.'

'... he'd [Father] accepted long ago that there was always prayer, even for someone who hardly believed and even when hope was lost. And to everything a purpose under heaven because, looking back, even though those prayers went unanswered, I can see, or believe, that they did give us something, a certain sense of peace, at least for those few minutes each evening.'

'The morning of that last day started off grey and mild but by afternoon had thickened with mist, an icy fur that smoked the air and turned everything soft and silver.'

'The only question I asked myself was why such wicked things as fairies were allowed, even in stories, to exist, while so much good, and all too often the very best of us, had to suffer such bad endings.'

'The rich die the same as the poor…And money won't spare them the suffering.'

'The scene was one I knew well, and yet everything was different. This… was death. The silence of it frightened me. The vacancy. I knew the shape, but what remained was a husk, nothing more than flesh and bone. The life inside, the laughter and even the recent agony, was gone. The face, impossibly young-seeming, looked only vaguely familiar...'

'Lately, I think a lot about endings. I have no fear of death, but I'd rather not see it coming. Because I've already known enough of it in my life. Some days now are good, and others less so, and on those down-days I can feel it in the air. You just know.'

'This is how death can be when it's slow in arriving. Time becomes a tide on the turn. You stop wishing and counting days. And start looking at the things you've left behind.'

'The passing years are supposed to soften what has gone before, but they don't. Because for most of us, the past has nowhere to go. The best we can do is live beneath its weight.'

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoughts soon.

[Ann Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this book of short stories 4 stars because the stories deal with grief, loss, lost love, heartbreak, real love spanning different countries such as Ireland of course, Paris, Spain, Taipei and other locations. These 12 stories were sometimes heartbreaking but out of the 12 stories, some had happy endings.

I love short story collections, especially those that make you feel emotion. Some of the stories made me cry with grief, some made me smile and some had happy endings, but all were written beautifully by author Billy O'Callaghan and the magical descriptions of different places. I like stories that bring about different emotions in me and these 12 certainly did. Most ended with happy endings for the characters, some did not, but they all depicted stories of real life pain and happiness. Of course, I liked some more than others but I give this short story book 4 stars because of the beautiful writing and mostly because the different range of emotions I felt.

If it's hard for you to handle grief and heartache, this might not be for you, but it was certainly a book I liked very much and was able to handle, though there is much heartbreak in my own life.

A special thanks to Harper Collins Publishers and NetGalley for my ARC for my honest opinion.

[Carla · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have heard great things about the author, Billy O'Callaghan and wanted to read something he had authored. When the audiobook of The Boatman and Other Stories became available, I decided that I would start with this one. The writing of these stories was eloquent, descriptive and heart-wrenching. I was not expecting these stories to be so tragic. The characters were everyday, ordinary people and what some of them went through broke my heart. I think the two stories that will stay with me the longest are "Beginish" and "A Death in the Family". These stories had characters that I became emotionally attached to and felt their pain. Billy O’Callaghan took me to different places, and introduced me to a variety of characters. He depicts different circumstances in the character’s lives, but always brought me to a place where I experienced love, loss, tragedy, and loneliness. I have only read a few books by Irish authors and find their writing to be tragic and heart-breaking, yet honest and realistic. I am not sure if this was the right time for me to read this book with all the tragedy in our world right now. I will say that the author is a dynamic writer, descriptive and able to evoke emotions in his readers.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Gary Furlong and Jan Cramer. I liked that there were both a male and female narrator for these stories. I had no problem with the accents and they added to the authenticity of the story. I will say that I found Jan Cramer's narration very slow and would have liked to increase the speed, but Gary Furlong was spot on. The publisher generously provided me with a copy of this book upon request. The rating, ideas and opinions shared are my own.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a well-known fact that the Irish are supreme storytellers. Billy O'Callaghan lives up to this praise. I've often noted that a book of well written collection, featuring well crafted stories without a clinker in the bunch, is more taxing for a reader than a novel of similar length. Such is The Boatman.

Twelve stories delving into the human heart, each of which demands attention and immersion, to be nipped at over a period of days and not devoured in one sitting. Can't be done. Each features a person sometimes at a crossroads, which is a usual trope, but in many there is a look backward at a life that directed them there. The final sentence of "Wildflowers" sums this up: "He could tell himself, and believe, that he was who he'd always been, in one breath an old man, in the next still very much a boy, and he kept his losses close because time's barriers were soft."

An old woman remembers a lost brother ("Looking back, I see that he was born for boyhood, that it was not for him merely a passage but the destination"), a woman fleeing something unexplained in a hot, Spanish city, doomed lovers -- there is not a clichéd character in the mix. And the story from which the collection gets its title required for me a fistful of Kleenex. Highly recommended.

[Tsung · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I age, I find myself favouring novels and stories that I know will end happily, not because that makes them more believable but because the very inverse of that is true, because their sense of reality softens and they again get to be something more than the world as it has shown itself to me. Not bad all the way to its core and rarely intentionally so, not without its beautiful moments, but neither naturally set up, it seems, for happy endings. Because in the end there’s always death, and always broken hearts. Happy stories, at least, get to hold the air of magic.

This is a collection of twelve short stories of which the star is undoubtedly The Boatman.

The Boatman is outstanding story of the loss of family. The writing is elegant, each description is so fitting and not a single word is wasted. There are favourite quotes but I’ll practically quote the entire story. The story can be found here:

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/bo...

Ruins is my next favourite, a story about duty (guilt) and the loss of love and happiness (regret). Regret, we’d both come to realise, was a far greater burden to bear than guilt. Guilt hadn’t the permanence of regret, and could be kissed and laughed away.

Because this, as anyone who has ever had their heart broken by love knows, is how it has to be. The tide comes in and then recedes, and we stand and wait for it to come in again. So much of life is waiting, but even ruined as we are, waiting at least makes room for dreams

The remaining stories are also nicely written but the characters do not leave much of an impression. Maybe it’s me. ’People are more than these definitions. You’re looking in the wrong place, if you are hoping to see who someone really is.’ Segovia

Loss seems to be the prevalent theme, a theme which also features in O’Callaghan’s novel My Coney Island Baby. Loss of parent, child, sibling, relationships, fidelity etc.

One interesting thing is how Billy is mentioned in both Ruins and A Death in the Family, perhaps references to the author. He also acknowledges Ying Tai Chang, a Taiwanese writer and professor in the credits and I wonder if there is some connection with Ruins.

[Bookoholiccafe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first book by Billy O'Callaghan. The book offers twelve remarkable and astonishing stories, explaining the depth of different bitter and sweet feelings that humanity experience during lifetime. It explores the depth of love, loss, regret, relationships, and tragedies in life.
I enjoyed every single one of them. O’callaghan’s storytelling skill is amazing. With intense an emphasis, each story describes and portrays a moment in people’s lives O’callaghan have chosen ordinary characters and what they have gone through in life. Their life stories made me very emotional since I felt strong grief and heartbreak. And I don’t recommend it to those who can not easily handle these feelings.
I would like to share these quotes from my two favorite stories, the first one from Love is Strange and the second one from A Death in the Family:
- “‘Love shouldn’t be anybody’s business’, I sighed. ‘what lives between to people doesn’t belong to anyone one else. And maybe we don’t always have to understand what it is about.’
- “Time passes but doesn’t get far, and maybe for some of us, for some of us nearing our own precipice, the dead still sing.”
No matter how much I try to review this book I can not express my feeling, I think it’s a must read book.
Many Thanks to Harper Perennial for this gifted copy.

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[Bonnie G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't read this when you are sad. You will bleed out. This is a gorgeous collection stories about grief. All kinds of loss are covered. The loss of ability, peace, love, and familiarity are all here, but many of these stories focus on the loss of children or on pregnancy loss. In many ways O'Callaghan tells us about life and about connection through stories of death and disconnection. These stories are moving and beautifully written, though I think to look at beauty only through its loss is a sad way to see the world. Also, the references to being at the end of life and needing to be cared for at the age of 62 (this happens in two of the stories) were problematic for this fully ambulatory 62-year-old, but I shan't hold that against O'Callaghan. There are a few stories that don't sing, but even those are good -- the rest are truly great.

[Wes · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars . I had been counting down the days to get my hands on this book. Beautifully written as you would expect but it didn't move me like his other writings did . Twelve short stories my favourite being Death in the Family , but it had already appeared in a different collection of stories.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning. I discovered O'Callaghan's books last year and as impressive as they've been, this one is in my opinion the best yet. The dust jacket describes these stories as "quietly dazzling, carefully crafted", and that's the truth. This collection shows a writer in great control. Sentence for sentence, O'Callaghan is as good as anyone. There are no gimmicks or tricks. The stories are serious and make for hard reading at times but they are also beautiful and very moving. It's difficult to pick favourites, but The Boatman, Ruins, Wildflowers and especially A Death in the Family are some of the best I have ever read. This is highly recommended.

[Jenny Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful read. One to go back to and enjoy once again