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The Boughs Withered When I Told Them My Name
The Boughs Withered is the debut collection from accomplished Irish author Maura McHugh. It includes twenty tales – four of them original to the volume – which represent the best strange visions from an award-winning writer of fiction, non-fiction, comic books and plays. Among the featured stories is "Bone Mother", which was adapted into the award-winning stop-motion animated short film by See Creature in Canada. In her horror and dark fantasy stories, Maura McHugh explores her love of the uncanny, delves into the eerie past, and evokes weird landscapes that might just co-exist with our own.
1. Introduction by Kim Newman
2. Vic
3. Who Hears Our Cries in Forgotten Tongues?
4. The Boughs Withered When I Told Them My Dreams
5. The Light at the Centre
6. A Rebellious House
7. Beautiful Calamity
8. Home
9. Moments on the Cliff
10. The Gift of the Sea
11. Suspension
12. The Tamga
13. Spooky Girl
14. The Hanging Tree
15. The Diet
16. Involuntary Muscle
17. Family
18. Wake the Dead
19. Y
20. Bone Mother
21. Water
22. Author’s Afterword.
1. Introduction by Kim Newman
2. Vic
3. Who Hears Our Cries in Forgotten Tongues?
4. The Boughs Withered When I Told Them My Dreams
5. The Light at the Centre
6. A Rebellious House
7. Beautiful Calamity
8. Home
9. Moments on the Cliff
10. The Gift of the Sea
11. Suspension
12. The Tamga
13. Spooky Girl
14. The Hanging Tree
15. The Diet
16. Involuntary Muscle
17. Family
18. Wake the Dead
19. Y
20. Bone Mother
21. Water
22. Author’s Afterword.
181 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 27, 2019
5 people are currently reading
44 people want to read
About the author
Maura McHugh
72 books73 followersMaura McHugh is a writer living in Galway, Ireland.
She has a MA in Irish Gothic, and a MA in Screenwriting. Her short fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in publications in America and Europe. She's published two collections - Twisted Fairy Tales and Twisted Myths - in the USA, and her new collection The Boughs Withered When I Told Them My Dreams was published by NewCon Press in 2019.
She's written several comic book series for companies like Dark Horse and IDW, and most recently Judge Anderson for 2000 AD, and is also a screenwriter, playwright, a critic, and has served on the juries of international literary, comic book, and film awards. She's written a monograph on David Lynch's iconic film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, published by Electric Dreamhouse Press/PS Publishing, which was nominated for a 2018 British Fantasy Award for Best Non Fiction.
Her short story 'Bone Mother' was adapted into a short stop-motion animated film by Sylvie Trouvé and Dale Hayward of the See Creature animation company, produced by the National Film Board of Canada’s Animation Studio, and premiered at Festival Stop Motion in Montreal in September 2018.
Maura's sf rom-com radio play The Love of Small Appliances was broadcast on NearFM in Ireland in June 2019.
She has a MA in Irish Gothic, and a MA in Screenwriting. Her short fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in publications in America and Europe. She's published two collections - Twisted Fairy Tales and Twisted Myths - in the USA, and her new collection The Boughs Withered When I Told Them My Dreams was published by NewCon Press in 2019.
She's written several comic book series for companies like Dark Horse and IDW, and most recently Judge Anderson for 2000 AD, and is also a screenwriter, playwright, a critic, and has served on the juries of international literary, comic book, and film awards. She's written a monograph on David Lynch's iconic film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, published by Electric Dreamhouse Press/PS Publishing, which was nominated for a 2018 British Fantasy Award for Best Non Fiction.
Her short story 'Bone Mother' was adapted into a short stop-motion animated film by Sylvie Trouvé and Dale Hayward of the See Creature animation company, produced by the National Film Board of Canada’s Animation Studio, and premiered at Festival Stop Motion in Montreal in September 2018.
Maura's sf rom-com radio play The Love of Small Appliances was broadcast on NearFM in Ireland in June 2019.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 11, 2020
Thoroughly enjoyed Maura McHugh's book. She writes about dark subjects with warmth and compassion with no false notes. Her tales are thoughtful, highly imaginative, enthralling and entertaining.
Her writing draws you in gradually until you feel like you are coming closer and closer to a dark secret.
What's unusual if not unique about these stories is the way Maura McHugh mixes the modern and the mythological, darkness and light, and makes the unnatural quite natural.
I don't often read supernatural or mythology, but I do like to try different genre now and again.
I wasn't sure what to expect but I wasn't disappointed and found the world Maura McHugh creates compelling and her offbeat style totally engaging.
If you like compelling and real characters, strong writing and stories you can't put down I highly recommend you buy this book now.
Her writing draws you in gradually until you feel like you are coming closer and closer to a dark secret.
What's unusual if not unique about these stories is the way Maura McHugh mixes the modern and the mythological, darkness and light, and makes the unnatural quite natural.
I don't often read supernatural or mythology, but I do like to try different genre now and again.
I wasn't sure what to expect but I wasn't disappointed and found the world Maura McHugh creates compelling and her offbeat style totally engaging.
If you like compelling and real characters, strong writing and stories you can't put down I highly recommend you buy this book now.
September 22, 2020
This is a excellent collection from Irish writer Maura McHugh. It has four new stories, as well as older work from various magazines and anthologies. The stories are mostly horror and weird fiction, and you want to take your time and savour each one. The characters are real people, and McHugh is very good at giving you a sense of place.
June 13, 2025
Short story collections are usually hit and miss, there are always a couple of substandard filler tales to pad out the page count. Always. Except here. Not a dud to be seen in this book, the only downer I took from it was that it had to end. Fantastic stuff throughout.
January 21, 2022
It's been an awful long time since I've glommed a short-story collection like that. Magnificent writing. Great characters. Deeply satisfying, almost timeless, supernatural fare.
January 13, 2020
A great collection of supernatural stories. I enjoyed all of them .!
September 19, 2019
Irish short story and comic book writer and critic Maura McHugh has appeared in so many venues, including horror and weird fiction bastion Black Static and prestige anthologies like Joe S. Pulver’s Cassilda’s Song, that it comes as something of a surprise to learn that this is her first story collection. But so it is, spanning some 15 years of work, with 20 dark and weird tales, 4 of them original to this volume. With a title cheekily adapted from a verse of W.B. Yeats, a cover design by the ever-inspiring Daniele Serra, and the usual high production values of NewCon Press, The Boughs Withered (When I Told Them My Dreams) is an attractive enough package on the outside. What’s it like on the inside?
I’m glad to be able to report that The Boughs Withered is refreshingly diverse, varied in tone, diction, setting and even genre niche, and more imaginatively rich and highly coloured than many contemporary debut weird and dark fiction collections. There’s a snap to the dialogue and an engaging narrative pulse best captured in stories like “Spooky Girl” and “The Gift of the Sea.” It’s typical of Maura McHugh’s writing that the latter story manages to marry modern post-GFC Ireland with the spirit of Celtic mythology seamlessly. I don’t know if this is some kind of Flann O’Brien Irish gift to speak in many tongues, but it certainly makes for some highly enjoyable reading. The author commands a whole gamut of styles, and hardly ever leaves you feeling that her wordplay is wasted or overwrought. The settings also range from the Russia of legend to modern New York, with Ireland taking a leading but by no means an exclusive role, and some of that ranging afield has clearly been pivotal to her development as a writer, as she explains in her Afterword. She may write to “intuit the overlooked people who have been silenced,” but this is by no means her only concern. One of her most Irish historical stories, “Home,” is also one where cosmic horror slips into the picture, as it does in “The Diet.” Then again, at least one other story, “The Hanging Tree,” is “almost not supernatural at all” – but still very unsettling.
I don’t know what kind of expectations you might come to this book with, but chances are you’ll find them transcended. There’s infinite enough variety in it to upset anyone’s preconceptions. You’ll be spooked, but you’ll also be thoroughly entertained. That’s a far more important thing than is sometimes realized, and far rarer too. Maura McHugh brings it off in style. The Boughs Withered is a book you’re likely to come back to again and again just for the sheer pleasure of reading it. Now how uncommon, and how important, is that?
I’m glad to be able to report that The Boughs Withered is refreshingly diverse, varied in tone, diction, setting and even genre niche, and more imaginatively rich and highly coloured than many contemporary debut weird and dark fiction collections. There’s a snap to the dialogue and an engaging narrative pulse best captured in stories like “Spooky Girl” and “The Gift of the Sea.” It’s typical of Maura McHugh’s writing that the latter story manages to marry modern post-GFC Ireland with the spirit of Celtic mythology seamlessly. I don’t know if this is some kind of Flann O’Brien Irish gift to speak in many tongues, but it certainly makes for some highly enjoyable reading. The author commands a whole gamut of styles, and hardly ever leaves you feeling that her wordplay is wasted or overwrought. The settings also range from the Russia of legend to modern New York, with Ireland taking a leading but by no means an exclusive role, and some of that ranging afield has clearly been pivotal to her development as a writer, as she explains in her Afterword. She may write to “intuit the overlooked people who have been silenced,” but this is by no means her only concern. One of her most Irish historical stories, “Home,” is also one where cosmic horror slips into the picture, as it does in “The Diet.” Then again, at least one other story, “The Hanging Tree,” is “almost not supernatural at all” – but still very unsettling.
I don’t know what kind of expectations you might come to this book with, but chances are you’ll find them transcended. There’s infinite enough variety in it to upset anyone’s preconceptions. You’ll be spooked, but you’ll also be thoroughly entertained. That’s a far more important thing than is sometimes realized, and far rarer too. Maura McHugh brings it off in style. The Boughs Withered is a book you’re likely to come back to again and again just for the sheer pleasure of reading it. Now how uncommon, and how important, is that?
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews