What do you think?
Rate this book
That Old Country Music: Stories
From the author of the wildly acclaimed
Night Boat to Tangier,
a
New York Times
"Top 10" book of 2019, here are stories of contemporary Ireland: full of love (and sex), melancholy and magic, bedecked in some of the most gorgeous prose being written today.
With his three novels and two short story collections, Kevin Barry has steadily established his stature as one of the finest writers not just in Ireland but in the English language. His prodigious gifts with language, character, and setting in these eleven exquisite stories transport the reader to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humour and the uncanny primal power of the Irish landscape, the stories in That Old Country Music represent some of the finest fiction being written today.
With his three novels and two short story collections, Kevin Barry has steadily established his stature as one of the finest writers not just in Ireland but in the English language. His prodigious gifts with language, character, and setting in these eleven exquisite stories transport the reader to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humour and the uncanny primal power of the Irish landscape, the stories in That Old Country Music represent some of the finest fiction being written today.
187 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 15, 2020
206 people are currently reading
3777 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Barry
80 books1,205 followersKevin Barry is an Irish writer. He is the author of two collections of short stories, and the novel City of Bohane, which was the winner of the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 385 reviews
October 5, 2020
Kevin Barry's collection of short stories bear all the trademarks of his vital, vibrant, poetic and lyrical prose, his beautiful rich textured descriptions are to be savoured, then there is his compassion and humanity in the offbeat, occasionally cunning, criminal, feckless, sexually confident, fastidious, sensitive, addled and flawed characters he creates. There is dark humour to be found in these stories, with their focus on broken hearts, the sorrow, torments, cruelty and sadness of love, the well worn shapes of desire, erotica, lust, loss, heartbreak which can hold the seeds of madness and insanity. His depiction of the ancient Emerald Isle overflows with the psychic, a magic, a spiritualism, the tangible soul and atmosphere of the land, its bogs, its beauty, mountains, and hissing seas, emanating a timelessness, brimming with moodiness and feelings, brooding, singing its beguiling music for those that can hear.
The people, families and communities are deeply connected, an earthy connection that often lives beyond death such as can be found in Old Stock, the death of Uncle Aldo and an old inheritance. Love can be a tricky affair, as it is for 35 year old Seamus Ferry, bedevilled by the fear of committing his heart to his love, the Polish Katherine Zielinski, driven by an inner compulsion to destroy all that he loves. Collecting old folk songs that have yet to be recorded leads to the discovery of a troubling song, of matters of the heart, all its destructive powers, the deranged souls, its ephemeral nature, incorporating erotic wickedness and greed. Con McCarthy is the connoisseur of death, an expert, elaborating on it in depth, with a particular relish of the slapstick death as he rearranges his face for each death that he relates. A grim but necessary and vital messenger of death for his city.
As always with short story collections, some are more substantial than others, but with Barry, every single one is a revelation, a tribute to the transformative and artful power of his storytelling, even within the short story format, in which he is entirely at home. My favourite stories were Ox Mountain Death Song, Toronto and the State of Grace, and Roethke in the Bughouse, which tells of the American poet Theodore Roethke, married to Beatrice, on the island of Inishbofin, having a breakdown, to be committed to a mainland psychiatric hospital. It's always a sheer joy to read virtually anything Barry writes, as indeed these short stories are, but I did on occasion hanker for greater length, and I was shocked at how quickly I reached the end of the book, it all seemed too brief an experience. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Canongate for an ARC.
The people, families and communities are deeply connected, an earthy connection that often lives beyond death such as can be found in Old Stock, the death of Uncle Aldo and an old inheritance. Love can be a tricky affair, as it is for 35 year old Seamus Ferry, bedevilled by the fear of committing his heart to his love, the Polish Katherine Zielinski, driven by an inner compulsion to destroy all that he loves. Collecting old folk songs that have yet to be recorded leads to the discovery of a troubling song, of matters of the heart, all its destructive powers, the deranged souls, its ephemeral nature, incorporating erotic wickedness and greed. Con McCarthy is the connoisseur of death, an expert, elaborating on it in depth, with a particular relish of the slapstick death as he rearranges his face for each death that he relates. A grim but necessary and vital messenger of death for his city.
As always with short story collections, some are more substantial than others, but with Barry, every single one is a revelation, a tribute to the transformative and artful power of his storytelling, even within the short story format, in which he is entirely at home. My favourite stories were Ox Mountain Death Song, Toronto and the State of Grace, and Roethke in the Bughouse, which tells of the American poet Theodore Roethke, married to Beatrice, on the island of Inishbofin, having a breakdown, to be committed to a mainland psychiatric hospital. It's always a sheer joy to read virtually anything Barry writes, as indeed these short stories are, but I did on occasion hanker for greater length, and I was shocked at how quickly I reached the end of the book, it all seemed too brief an experience. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Canongate for an ARC.
December 27, 2020
3.5 stars rounded up because the writing is beautiful throughout.
A mix of themes in this collection of short stories elicited from me a mix of reactions. Themes of lust, loneliness, love, death are contained here. Some were a bit dark, but the one consistent thing is the beautiful writing. Barry allows us to get inside the character’s heads, see the lovely Irish surroundings, as he depicts profound moments.
I found “THE COAST OF LEITRIM”, the first story, to be especially sad at times and a little bit creepy at the beginning. The ending felt, well - open ended - could be hopeful or maybe not. But there’s nothing questionable about how these words moved me: “ The Coast of Leitrim sat under a low rim of Atlantic cloud. The breeze made the cables above the bungalows whisper of the Sunday afternoon’s melancholy. The waves made polite applause when they broke on the shingle beach. “
“SAINT CATHERINE OF THE FIELDS” tells of a song, of love and loss .”The aching music of love was to be heard now across the hill, and the hill was not used to it. ...It felt as if the wind was holding its breath. “
My very favorite is “ROMA KID” about a nine year old Roma girl who runs away from a life of strife and hunger, finding kindness and care, solace and a quiet life with an old hermit. Every word in this story moved me . I read it twice. “The understanding that grew between them was first of tone and gesture, and then of words,as she took them one by one ...The pretense that they must puzzle out their dilemma was soon dropped . It became clear that this was where she wanted to be....He gave her his life. He gave her the routines and tiny errands of it. “ And so much more, but I can’t duplicate the story here . It’s a must read.
I can’t say that I was pulled into and moved by all of the eleven stories, but I will bump up to 4 stars because Barry’s beautiful writing deserves it. I will definitely have to try something else by this author.
Glad to be back reading with my book buddies , Diane and Esil. Always a pleasure.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Doubleday through Edelweiss.
December 29, 2020
3.5 My first read of Kevin Barry, this grouping of short stories, but definitely not my last.
His writing is rich, descriptions sublime, such as this found in the story, Toronto and the State of Grace, "The hills displayed with arrogance the richest of autumn and glowed, and I walked in a state of almost blissful sadness." This also happens to be one of the stories that has stayed with me. Many of the stories exude loneliness, melancholy, but for some reason I found this one a tad amusing. Well, until the ending but even that seemed fitting.
I also liked the title story, the realism was spot on and I again appreciated the ending, which wasn't sad so much as accepting, this is how it is, and was for me unexpected.
This was a read with Angela and Esil and all three of us loved and favored Roma Kid. Just a wonderfully written piece full of meaning, making the most of what you have and finding a home when you least expect. A beautiful and poignant story.
Their is liberal use of the F word throughout and two of the stories for me, didn't work. On the whole though this is a well drawn collection of shorts.
ARC from Edelweiss
His writing is rich, descriptions sublime, such as this found in the story, Toronto and the State of Grace, "The hills displayed with arrogance the richest of autumn and glowed, and I walked in a state of almost blissful sadness." This also happens to be one of the stories that has stayed with me. Many of the stories exude loneliness, melancholy, but for some reason I found this one a tad amusing. Well, until the ending but even that seemed fitting.
I also liked the title story, the realism was spot on and I again appreciated the ending, which wasn't sad so much as accepting, this is how it is, and was for me unexpected.
This was a read with Angela and Esil and all three of us loved and favored Roma Kid. Just a wonderfully written piece full of meaning, making the most of what you have and finding a home when you least expect. A beautiful and poignant story.
Their is liberal use of the F word throughout and two of the stories for me, didn't work. On the whole though this is a well drawn collection of shorts.
ARC from Edelweiss
November 1, 2020
For my money, Kevin Barry is the finest Irish writer of his generation, and the first story in his latest collection backs up my theory. In
The Coast of Leitrim
, a lonely man, who sees himself as far more cultured than his peers, develops a crush on a waitress at the local café. It contains the perfect blend of humour and romance, with hints of a darker obsession thrown in. The last line is a triumph.
The rest of the stories don't quite scale the same peaks, but there are plenty of highlights. Old Stock tells of a writer who inherits a Donegal cottage from an uncle, finding that his new lifestyle makes him irresistible to the ladies. Ox Mountain Death Song plays like an Irish Western - a dogged sergeant and an unrepentant criminal end their epic battle in a final showdown. The old man in Who's-Dead McCarthy has unhealthy fascination with death, verging on the comical. The only effort that didn't really work for me was Roethke in the Bughouse, an ambitious attempt to capture the American poet's mental state during a breakdown in a Ballinasloe hospital.
Throughout the collection, Barry proves a rare ability to capture the thrills and heartaches of rural Irish life, shot through with a black comedy that is pitched at just the right level. He is a true master of the short story and I can't wait for his next anthology.
Favourite Quotes:
"He had the misfortune in life to be fastidious and to own a delicacy of feeling. He drank wine rather than beer and favored French films. Such an oddity this made him in the district that he might as well have had three heads up on Dromord Hill."
"Seamus Ferris could bear a lot. In fact, already in his life he had borne plenty. He could handle just about anything, he felt, shy of a happy outcome. As the summer aged he became unseated by her trust of him and by her apparent want for him. What kind of a maniac could fall for the likes of me, he wondered. The question was unanswerable and terrifying."
"The pale-green days of these Atlantic reaches could be enlivened only by fucking and fighting - moments of violent glow - and the Canavan magic was to make sparks from little."
"The caves at Keash Hill were no more than a fifty-minute haul from the Ox Mountains and there lay the remnants of elk, wolves, bear. It was a place haunted by desperate mammals since the hills and mountains had cracked and opened—as the province of Connaught formed—a place with a diabolic feeling sometimes along its shale and bracken stretches; a darkness that seeped not from above but from beneath."
"At my age - I had long since cleared the vault of fifty - it was not unreasonable to assume that this might have been my last great love. But still my pain had that shimmer of bliss at its edges - I had gone to the end of passion with someone, once more, and I knew that the achievement was, as it always is, a quiet miracle."
The rest of the stories don't quite scale the same peaks, but there are plenty of highlights. Old Stock tells of a writer who inherits a Donegal cottage from an uncle, finding that his new lifestyle makes him irresistible to the ladies. Ox Mountain Death Song plays like an Irish Western - a dogged sergeant and an unrepentant criminal end their epic battle in a final showdown. The old man in Who's-Dead McCarthy has unhealthy fascination with death, verging on the comical. The only effort that didn't really work for me was Roethke in the Bughouse, an ambitious attempt to capture the American poet's mental state during a breakdown in a Ballinasloe hospital.
Throughout the collection, Barry proves a rare ability to capture the thrills and heartaches of rural Irish life, shot through with a black comedy that is pitched at just the right level. He is a true master of the short story and I can't wait for his next anthology.
Favourite Quotes:
"He had the misfortune in life to be fastidious and to own a delicacy of feeling. He drank wine rather than beer and favored French films. Such an oddity this made him in the district that he might as well have had three heads up on Dromord Hill."
"Seamus Ferris could bear a lot. In fact, already in his life he had borne plenty. He could handle just about anything, he felt, shy of a happy outcome. As the summer aged he became unseated by her trust of him and by her apparent want for him. What kind of a maniac could fall for the likes of me, he wondered. The question was unanswerable and terrifying."
"The pale-green days of these Atlantic reaches could be enlivened only by fucking and fighting - moments of violent glow - and the Canavan magic was to make sparks from little."
"The caves at Keash Hill were no more than a fifty-minute haul from the Ox Mountains and there lay the remnants of elk, wolves, bear. It was a place haunted by desperate mammals since the hills and mountains had cracked and opened—as the province of Connaught formed—a place with a diabolic feeling sometimes along its shale and bracken stretches; a darkness that seeped not from above but from beneath."
"At my age - I had long since cleared the vault of fifty - it was not unreasonable to assume that this might have been my last great love. But still my pain had that shimmer of bliss at its edges - I had gone to the end of passion with someone, once more, and I knew that the achievement was, as it always is, a quiet miracle."
March 2, 2021
Kevin Barry is an Irish author I had not yet read, and seeing the short stories available on NetGalley, I took the opportunity to read them. The two which I found most enjoyable were Ox Mountain Death Song and Old Stock.
The author has a delightful lyrical tone. I am looking forward to reading his 2019 Booker nominee, Night Boat to Tangier, which I have waiting for me on my Kindle.
3 out of 5 stars
Many thanks to NetGalley and publisher Double Day for an ARC of That Old Country Music in exchange for an honest review.
Published January 12, 2021
Review posted to Goodreads 3/02/21
The author has a delightful lyrical tone. I am looking forward to reading his 2019 Booker nominee, Night Boat to Tangier, which I have waiting for me on my Kindle.
3 out of 5 stars
Many thanks to NetGalley and publisher Double Day for an ARC of That Old Country Music in exchange for an honest review.
Published January 12, 2021
Review posted to Goodreads 3/02/21
July 9, 2020
In an interview with The TLS, Kevin Barry was asked, "Which author (living or dead) do you think is most overrated?" and his reply was "I shall courteously refrain from naming names but any of the acclaimed authors (and there are many) whose work is essentially humourless. High seriousness on the page is always the giveaway mark of mediocrity. The very best work is always funny."
This is interesting because this collection of 11 short stories contains a lot of sad people in sad situations. It is one of Barry’s gifts as a writer to write about sad situations in a way that makes you smile or even laugh out loud. There is humour in the darkness and a lot of it comes from the wonderful turn of phrase that Barry seems to be able to summon up whatever the circumstance he is writing about. Some of the smiles are smiles of recognition that he has captured something with his words.
The other remarkable thing Barry can do when writing is write a short story that feels complete but leaves you wishing it was longer. I have read all of Barry’s novels but this is my first experience with his shorter work. I have read other short story collections where the stories felt that they needed to be longer because they were incomplete or where the stories felt like they had actually run their course about halfway through. Telling a good short story is an art. And Kevin Barry is very good at it.
Take the opening story here where a young man meets a young girl but is totally unprepared for the way love will open him up.
Tears welled up in his eyes and he had to make out it was the breeze off the river was the cause of them.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Really?’
‘I didn’t realise I was so on my own,’ he said. ‘If we’re going to be brutally f**ken honest about things.’
(asterisks mine to try to avoid offending anyone!).
And a few pages later, we read:
He could handle just about anything, he felt, shy of a happy outcome.
The course of true love ne’er runs straight, but you will have to read the story to find out whether there is a happy outcome and whether our protagonist can actually handle it.
I think my favourite story in the collection is “Extremadura (Until Night Falls)” in which a vagrant crouches by a dog at the edge of town in Spain and watches the people whilst remembering why he has left Ireland and found himself wandering in a foreign country. I actually read this one twice before moving on to the next.
This is only a short book (I am really not sure I believe the Goodreads information that has it at 240 pages, but my NetGalley ARC has no page numbers), but it is full of Barry’s trademark beautiful sentences and turns of phrase. It tells us darkly humorous and moving stories of people, as the blurb says on the cusp between love and catastrophe, heartbreak and epiphany, resignation and hope. It is a pleasure to read.
4.5 stars and highly recommended.
My thanks to Canongate for an ARC via NetGalley.
This is interesting because this collection of 11 short stories contains a lot of sad people in sad situations. It is one of Barry’s gifts as a writer to write about sad situations in a way that makes you smile or even laugh out loud. There is humour in the darkness and a lot of it comes from the wonderful turn of phrase that Barry seems to be able to summon up whatever the circumstance he is writing about. Some of the smiles are smiles of recognition that he has captured something with his words.
The other remarkable thing Barry can do when writing is write a short story that feels complete but leaves you wishing it was longer. I have read all of Barry’s novels but this is my first experience with his shorter work. I have read other short story collections where the stories felt that they needed to be longer because they were incomplete or where the stories felt like they had actually run their course about halfway through. Telling a good short story is an art. And Kevin Barry is very good at it.
Take the opening story here where a young man meets a young girl but is totally unprepared for the way love will open him up.
Tears welled up in his eyes and he had to make out it was the breeze off the river was the cause of them.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Really?’
‘I didn’t realise I was so on my own,’ he said. ‘If we’re going to be brutally f**ken honest about things.’
(asterisks mine to try to avoid offending anyone!).
And a few pages later, we read:
He could handle just about anything, he felt, shy of a happy outcome.
The course of true love ne’er runs straight, but you will have to read the story to find out whether there is a happy outcome and whether our protagonist can actually handle it.
I think my favourite story in the collection is “Extremadura (Until Night Falls)” in which a vagrant crouches by a dog at the edge of town in Spain and watches the people whilst remembering why he has left Ireland and found himself wandering in a foreign country. I actually read this one twice before moving on to the next.
This is only a short book (I am really not sure I believe the Goodreads information that has it at 240 pages, but my NetGalley ARC has no page numbers), but it is full of Barry’s trademark beautiful sentences and turns of phrase. It tells us darkly humorous and moving stories of people, as the blurb says on the cusp between love and catastrophe, heartbreak and epiphany, resignation and hope. It is a pleasure to read.
4.5 stars and highly recommended.
My thanks to Canongate for an ARC via NetGalley.
September 12, 2021
This is Barry's third short story collection, and is another varied and impressive piece of work.
Most of these 11 stories have wild rural west Irish settings, and many of his protagonists are not obvious choices for literary characters, but they combine to form an affectionate but unsentimental picture of their setting.
I won't attempt to describe the individual stories or write a longer review, as I left it too long after finishing the book.
Most of these 11 stories have wild rural west Irish settings, and many of his protagonists are not obvious choices for literary characters, but they combine to form an affectionate but unsentimental picture of their setting.
I won't attempt to describe the individual stories or write a longer review, as I left it too long after finishing the book.
December 29, 2020
I tend to love books set in Ireland or about Ireland. These short stories are all set in Ireland. Many are dark and melancholy. There’s a fair bit of sex, swearing and raw emotion. I loved three of the stories (Roma Kid, the title story and The Coast of Letrim), liked most others and a couple lost my interest. But throughout Barry’s writing is absolutely beautiful. His use of language is extraordinary. So even if I didn’t like all of the stories, this is still a solid 4 star read for me. This was a welcome buddy read with Angela and Diane. I think we all had similar reactions to the stories. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.
December 31, 2021
Filled with loners, edge-of-society types, and those trying to find their way, this short story collection is rich with unforgettable characters. I think That Old Country Music is very likely to be in my top ten books of the year, it's that good. That's not to say that there weren't stories I liked better than others, of course there were - I think I enjoyed most those that have some narrative: there were a couple from inside the heads of a drunk and someone in a psychiatric hospital, and these worked less well for me. But the young woman waiting in the van for her boyfriend to come back from robbing a petrol station, or the character wooing a woman from Eastern Europe, or the man who is sexually alluring to women, but only in the house he inherited from his uncle - are all going to stay with me. Plus, Barry's nature writing is stella. (This is another collection that my #librarianhusband and I read to each other.)
November 13, 2024
First read May 2022 ....
Reread October 2024. Review updated 11/12/2024. Purchased in Ireland where we spent five weeks traveling, in September and October. I've added quite a few more notable quotes to my previous review.
...........
“Cause of Death: the west of Ireland.”—Kevin Barry
Kevin Barry is a great writer. One of my favorites. A master of dialogue, description, characters, you name it. Now I've read all three of his collections, and two* of three novels. Loved the stories, loved Night Boat to Tangier. Beatlebone got a pretty good three stars (but I dont remember why. I perhaps should reread it). I “intend” to tackle Bohane very soon. And this time (I’m pretty sure) I “mean” it.
*edit 10/2022: Well! I did mean what I'd said, apparently. I read City of Bohane shortly after writing that prediction. And it's tied with Brian Doyle's Mink River as my favorite book of the year so far. (Edit 11/12/24): I've since then reread Tangier and am now midway through his marvelous fourth novel.
All but one of these eleven stories takes place on Barry’s main turf, Ireland. The other story, "Extremadura (Until Night Falls)" is set in Spain where the author often wintered, because, well, you know. It's also, as I recall, the only first person POV story in this collection. I’d count seven as favorites, and there is nothing wrong with the other four, although “Toronto and the State of Grace” faltered after a strong start. It also kept reminding me of some of Roddy Doyle’s similarly structured, mostly-dialogue, two-eccentrics-walk-into-a-bar type stories, which I generally love. Maybe this is unfair. Perhaps both authors borrow from similar sources.
The Coast of Leitrim:
I’d read this one before, and will no doubt reread it many times again. It’s a dandy. By the way, the coast of Leitrim is only four kilometers long, the shortest of any non-landlocked county in Ireland. This is where Seamus takes his new girlfriend, Katherine from Poland, she of the slender frame but chubby knees: She pronounces his name, Shay-moos.
Excerpt: “Seamus Ferris could bear a lot. In fact, already in his life he had borne plenty. He could handle just about anything, he felt, short of a happy outcome. As the summer aged he became unseated by her trust of him and by her apparent want of him. What kind of maniac could fall for the likes of me, he wondered. The question was unanswerable and terrifying.”
Spoiler, sort of (this is to remind myself what happens):
It ends well, surprisingly.
p 15, dig this gorgeous quote: "On a clear night in mid-July, he went outside very late--stepped softly so as not to wake her-- to see the starlight fall on the mountain as she slept, and he made a ritual vow to remain true if not exactly to the reality of the small woman sleeping in his bed in the cottage then to the perfected version of her he had worked out in his scenarios, for her believed that this version could incorporate and sustain-- that we must each of us dream our lovers into their existence."
Deer Season:
p36 "She stood there for some time, until the blue had thickened to near-blackness, and she entered a spell of heavy dreaming or quietude such as can open out sometimes in youth if the person is to be an artist."
Determined to lose her virginity before she turns eighteen, a girl seduces a rough-edged loner. From Naoise Dolan’s terrific Stinging Fly review, (link below.): “Kevin Barry is no stranger to genre, most recently noir in his novel Night Boat to Tangier; this protagonist thinks she’s a Brontë heroine when she’s actually in a Western, with an irate father who’ll run the man out of town.”
Ox Mountain Death Song:
Another goal-oriented protagonist with a self-imposed deadline! Here, a 65- year old guard, about to retire, has three weeks to bring a local rogue to justice. This elaborate metaphor illustrates that the prey is just as determined as his pursuer:
“The worry for Sergeant Brown was that Canavan could lay up now the way a ferret will lay up in a burrow with the rabbit it has killed, the forked spit of its tongue lapping at neck blood, the pointed teeth taking tendon and bone apart, the claws carefully tearing back the skin—so tender the care, almost loving—to reveal the feast of vitals within, a feed that might last for days, and there is no way of getting the ferret out again short of extendable poles or dynamite.” (p50)
Who’s-Dead McCarthy:
“Con McCarthy was our connoisseur of death. He was its most knowing expert, its deftest elaborator. There was no death too insignificant for his delectation. A ninety-six-year-old poor deer in Thormondgate with the lungs papery as moth’s wings and the maplines of the years cracking her lips as she whispered her feeble last in the night—Con would have word of it by the breakfast and he would be up and down the street, his sad recital perfecting as he went.” …… “He’d come sauntering along at noon of day, now almost jaunty with the sadness, the eyes wet and wide, and he’d lean into you, and he might even have to place a palm to your shoulder to steady himself against the terrible excitement of it all." (p109, 110)
Roma Kid:
Maybe my favorite. A heartbreaking, beautiful story about a place and a life. Might it make a good film? A good candidate for an adaptation, methinks.
"Even yet the woodland each year stretches out and grows, like the shadow of disease spreading, and soon the century will turn again, and her trailer's flue will for just a little while longer twist its penlines of ash smoke through the hatching of the trees, and when she speaks to herself, on these final days, it is in the accent of the place, of the Ox Mountains." (p136
Extremadura (Until Night Falls):
"Now the sky makes a lurid note of the day' ending--there are hot flushes of pink and vermilion that would shame a cardinal." [...]
"And more than that you're as well not to know, the dog says."
That Old Country Music:
“Serranta was thirty-two years old to her seventeen and it was not long at all since he had been her mother’s fiancé. That’s the way it goes with close-knit families, he said.”
Roethke In the Bughouse:
I’d read this one previously, online. Based on a true event, the American poet, Theodore Roethke, was committed to a psychiatric hospital after suffering a breakdown on an Irish isle. Not an easy read but it’s a remarkable feat, capturing the POV of the disturbed poet.
I quite like this NY Times observation (link is below):
"If you’re fond of sentences like “The sun was setting,” you’re free to leave now. Barry won’t watch evening fall with so little effort. “The late October day was peeled and cool,” he’s more likely to write. “The light was miserly by 6, the last remnants clawed in weak scratches across the sky.” Or: “All across the silver hills in the east the cold spring night lovelessly descends.”
The following is also from the Times, which I partly agree with, except the “too lyrical” part. (I NEVER, ever, find Barry to be “too lyrical.” He’s just fucking right in that department as far as I’m concerned.):
"This is a short book, and even still there are two or three stories that don’t quite swing. And there are inevitably moments when Barry is too lyrical by half, though it’s easy enough to write off such moments as the cost of his gift. One of his lines about Roethke may as well be describing himself: “Brokenheartedness is the note that sustains always and this he can play at will.”"
Sources:
https://stingingfly.org/review/that-o...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/bo...
Reread October 2024. Review updated 11/12/2024. Purchased in Ireland where we spent five weeks traveling, in September and October. I've added quite a few more notable quotes to my previous review.
...........
“Cause of Death: the west of Ireland.”—Kevin Barry
Kevin Barry is a great writer. One of my favorites. A master of dialogue, description, characters, you name it. Now I've read all three of his collections, and two* of three novels. Loved the stories, loved Night Boat to Tangier. Beatlebone got a pretty good three stars (but I dont remember why. I perhaps should reread it). I “intend” to tackle Bohane very soon. And this time (I’m pretty sure) I “mean” it.
*edit 10/2022: Well! I did mean what I'd said, apparently. I read City of Bohane shortly after writing that prediction. And it's tied with Brian Doyle's Mink River as my favorite book of the year so far. (Edit 11/12/24): I've since then reread Tangier and am now midway through his marvelous fourth novel.
All but one of these eleven stories takes place on Barry’s main turf, Ireland. The other story, "Extremadura (Until Night Falls)" is set in Spain where the author often wintered, because, well, you know. It's also, as I recall, the only first person POV story in this collection. I’d count seven as favorites, and there is nothing wrong with the other four, although “Toronto and the State of Grace” faltered after a strong start. It also kept reminding me of some of Roddy Doyle’s similarly structured, mostly-dialogue, two-eccentrics-walk-into-a-bar type stories, which I generally love. Maybe this is unfair. Perhaps both authors borrow from similar sources.
The Coast of Leitrim:
I’d read this one before, and will no doubt reread it many times again. It’s a dandy. By the way, the coast of Leitrim is only four kilometers long, the shortest of any non-landlocked county in Ireland. This is where Seamus takes his new girlfriend, Katherine from Poland, she of the slender frame but chubby knees: She pronounces his name, Shay-moos.
Excerpt: “Seamus Ferris could bear a lot. In fact, already in his life he had borne plenty. He could handle just about anything, he felt, short of a happy outcome. As the summer aged he became unseated by her trust of him and by her apparent want of him. What kind of maniac could fall for the likes of me, he wondered. The question was unanswerable and terrifying.”
Spoiler, sort of (this is to remind myself what happens):
It ends well, surprisingly.
p 15, dig this gorgeous quote: "On a clear night in mid-July, he went outside very late--stepped softly so as not to wake her-- to see the starlight fall on the mountain as she slept, and he made a ritual vow to remain true if not exactly to the reality of the small woman sleeping in his bed in the cottage then to the perfected version of her he had worked out in his scenarios, for her believed that this version could incorporate and sustain-- that we must each of us dream our lovers into their existence."
Deer Season:
p36 "She stood there for some time, until the blue had thickened to near-blackness, and she entered a spell of heavy dreaming or quietude such as can open out sometimes in youth if the person is to be an artist."
Determined to lose her virginity before she turns eighteen, a girl seduces a rough-edged loner. From Naoise Dolan’s terrific Stinging Fly review, (link below.): “Kevin Barry is no stranger to genre, most recently noir in his novel Night Boat to Tangier; this protagonist thinks she’s a Brontë heroine when she’s actually in a Western, with an irate father who’ll run the man out of town.”
Ox Mountain Death Song:
Another goal-oriented protagonist with a self-imposed deadline! Here, a 65- year old guard, about to retire, has three weeks to bring a local rogue to justice. This elaborate metaphor illustrates that the prey is just as determined as his pursuer:
“The worry for Sergeant Brown was that Canavan could lay up now the way a ferret will lay up in a burrow with the rabbit it has killed, the forked spit of its tongue lapping at neck blood, the pointed teeth taking tendon and bone apart, the claws carefully tearing back the skin—so tender the care, almost loving—to reveal the feast of vitals within, a feed that might last for days, and there is no way of getting the ferret out again short of extendable poles or dynamite.” (p50)
Who’s-Dead McCarthy:
“Con McCarthy was our connoisseur of death. He was its most knowing expert, its deftest elaborator. There was no death too insignificant for his delectation. A ninety-six-year-old poor deer in Thormondgate with the lungs papery as moth’s wings and the maplines of the years cracking her lips as she whispered her feeble last in the night—Con would have word of it by the breakfast and he would be up and down the street, his sad recital perfecting as he went.” …… “He’d come sauntering along at noon of day, now almost jaunty with the sadness, the eyes wet and wide, and he’d lean into you, and he might even have to place a palm to your shoulder to steady himself against the terrible excitement of it all." (p109, 110)
Roma Kid:
Maybe my favorite. A heartbreaking, beautiful story about a place and a life. Might it make a good film? A good candidate for an adaptation, methinks.
"Even yet the woodland each year stretches out and grows, like the shadow of disease spreading, and soon the century will turn again, and her trailer's flue will for just a little while longer twist its penlines of ash smoke through the hatching of the trees, and when she speaks to herself, on these final days, it is in the accent of the place, of the Ox Mountains." (p136
Extremadura (Until Night Falls):
"Now the sky makes a lurid note of the day' ending--there are hot flushes of pink and vermilion that would shame a cardinal." [...]
"And more than that you're as well not to know, the dog says."
That Old Country Music:
“Serranta was thirty-two years old to her seventeen and it was not long at all since he had been her mother’s fiancé. That’s the way it goes with close-knit families, he said.”
Roethke In the Bughouse:
I’d read this one previously, online. Based on a true event, the American poet, Theodore Roethke, was committed to a psychiatric hospital after suffering a breakdown on an Irish isle. Not an easy read but it’s a remarkable feat, capturing the POV of the disturbed poet.
I quite like this NY Times observation (link is below):
"If you’re fond of sentences like “The sun was setting,” you’re free to leave now. Barry won’t watch evening fall with so little effort. “The late October day was peeled and cool,” he’s more likely to write. “The light was miserly by 6, the last remnants clawed in weak scratches across the sky.” Or: “All across the silver hills in the east the cold spring night lovelessly descends.”
The following is also from the Times, which I partly agree with, except the “too lyrical” part. (I NEVER, ever, find Barry to be “too lyrical.” He’s just fucking right in that department as far as I’m concerned.):
"This is a short book, and even still there are two or three stories that don’t quite swing. And there are inevitably moments when Barry is too lyrical by half, though it’s easy enough to write off such moments as the cost of his gift. One of his lines about Roethke may as well be describing himself: “Brokenheartedness is the note that sustains always and this he can play at will.”"
Sources:
https://stingingfly.org/review/that-o...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/bo...
October 8, 2021
I listened to Kevin Barry read this collection of stories and could listen to him read anything, really. I just also listened to his 2019 novel, Night Boat to Tangier, which is about two aging gangsters. His voice again is a match for the darkness and heat of the prose, the sadness and sweetness of life he depicts from The Old Country, i.e., Ireland. I loved three or four of these stories but liked most of them. Even if the story doesn't work as well as others, the language is always there, that singing he does, that poetry. I think he comes out of the gate strong (as one should in a collection of stories) with probably his strongest story, “The Coast of Leitrim,” which you can read here:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
“The Coast of Leitrim sat under a low rim of Atlantic cloud. The breeze made the cables above the bungalows whisper of the Sunday afternoon’s melancholy. The waves made polite applause when they broke on the shingle beach."
So it’s a story of a lonely man, Seamus, who develops a crush on a waitress at the local café, Kathryn, a Polish immigrant. He can't believe his good luck when she agrees to go on a date with him, but over time worries it can’t last for him and he sabotages the relationship in various ways: "What kind of a maniac could fall for the likes of me, he wondered. The question was unanswerable and terrifying."
Sweetness, romance, the lyricism of, shall I say longing and lust? Oh, what a lovely story and what an ending. Some humor laced throughout: Can we not just accept good things in our lives?!
I also like “Roma Kid” about a nine-year old Roma girl who runs away from a terrible life to live with an old recluse. “The understanding that grew between them was first of tone and gesture, and then of words, as she took them one by one. . . He gave her his life. He gave her the routines and tiny errands of it.”
Barry writes in another way about love, with some cruelty thrown in, in "Saint Catherine of the Fields," a story about a music scholar who studies an old song about a man, a shepherd, who falls in love with a married woman: "He came to believe in her almost religiously. When he said her name it was in an awed whisper and as if in litany. He came to see her as a saintly figure almost, his Saint Catherine, his saviour." But the married couple has encouraged this affair, for their own purposes, and the man will suffer for it.
In the title story, a 17-year-old, pregnant Hannah, waits in a van for her 33-year-old boyfriend (formerly her mother’s boyfriend) as he robs a gas station. No surprise, things don’t end well, but then we look carefully at Hannah:
“Hannah Cryan came to ascend from herself. Above the green fields and the whitethorn blossom moving in the morning wind, above the stone walls and the Forestry pines, above the inland sea of the grasses, above the broken drone of the motorway, above all of this she measured out the stretch of her seventeen years. They had been mean and slow-feeling years. She was almost as old as the century and felt it."
“She looked out across the high fields. Just now as the cloudbank shifted to let the sun break through the whitethorn blossom was tipping; the strange vibrancy of its bloom would not tomorrow be so ghostly nor at the same time so vivid; by tacit agreement with our mountain the year already was turning. The strongest impulse she had was not towards love but towards that burning loneliness, and she knew by nature the tune’s circle and turn — it’s the way the wound wants the knife wants the wound wants the knife.”
I didn’t think “Roethke in the Bughouse” was particularly successful as a story, but since I grew up in Michigan close to where Roethke lived, in Saginaw, I know his poetry, so was interested in this depiction of his travel to Ireland and his nervous breakdown. It has one really good line in it that could stand in for the whole collection:
“𝘉𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘯𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘥𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘺 𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭.”
Then this great finish, that points to Barry as writer, too:
“ His left hand rests on his fat belly to feel out each breath as it moves through his ribs and eases him. His right hand lies limply by his side but the index finger is busy and scratches quick patterns on the grey starched sheet — it makes words.”
And that it does, for Roethke and Barry, words of rich sadness coming from a ver specific place. Barry writes out of a place he knows well, his west coast hometown of Sligo, near Ox Mountain. His tales of that place are full of damaged characters, rough rural landscapes and lyrical prose, always, the lyricism of death, of madness, of love.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
“The Coast of Leitrim sat under a low rim of Atlantic cloud. The breeze made the cables above the bungalows whisper of the Sunday afternoon’s melancholy. The waves made polite applause when they broke on the shingle beach."
So it’s a story of a lonely man, Seamus, who develops a crush on a waitress at the local café, Kathryn, a Polish immigrant. He can't believe his good luck when she agrees to go on a date with him, but over time worries it can’t last for him and he sabotages the relationship in various ways: "What kind of a maniac could fall for the likes of me, he wondered. The question was unanswerable and terrifying."
Sweetness, romance, the lyricism of, shall I say longing and lust? Oh, what a lovely story and what an ending. Some humor laced throughout: Can we not just accept good things in our lives?!
I also like “Roma Kid” about a nine-year old Roma girl who runs away from a terrible life to live with an old recluse. “The understanding that grew between them was first of tone and gesture, and then of words, as she took them one by one. . . He gave her his life. He gave her the routines and tiny errands of it.”
Barry writes in another way about love, with some cruelty thrown in, in "Saint Catherine of the Fields," a story about a music scholar who studies an old song about a man, a shepherd, who falls in love with a married woman: "He came to believe in her almost religiously. When he said her name it was in an awed whisper and as if in litany. He came to see her as a saintly figure almost, his Saint Catherine, his saviour." But the married couple has encouraged this affair, for their own purposes, and the man will suffer for it.
In the title story, a 17-year-old, pregnant Hannah, waits in a van for her 33-year-old boyfriend (formerly her mother’s boyfriend) as he robs a gas station. No surprise, things don’t end well, but then we look carefully at Hannah:
“Hannah Cryan came to ascend from herself. Above the green fields and the whitethorn blossom moving in the morning wind, above the stone walls and the Forestry pines, above the inland sea of the grasses, above the broken drone of the motorway, above all of this she measured out the stretch of her seventeen years. They had been mean and slow-feeling years. She was almost as old as the century and felt it."
“She looked out across the high fields. Just now as the cloudbank shifted to let the sun break through the whitethorn blossom was tipping; the strange vibrancy of its bloom would not tomorrow be so ghostly nor at the same time so vivid; by tacit agreement with our mountain the year already was turning. The strongest impulse she had was not towards love but towards that burning loneliness, and she knew by nature the tune’s circle and turn — it’s the way the wound wants the knife wants the wound wants the knife.”
I didn’t think “Roethke in the Bughouse” was particularly successful as a story, but since I grew up in Michigan close to where Roethke lived, in Saginaw, I know his poetry, so was interested in this depiction of his travel to Ireland and his nervous breakdown. It has one really good line in it that could stand in for the whole collection:
“𝘉𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘯𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘥𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘺 𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭.”
Then this great finish, that points to Barry as writer, too:
“ His left hand rests on his fat belly to feel out each breath as it moves through his ribs and eases him. His right hand lies limply by his side but the index finger is busy and scratches quick patterns on the grey starched sheet — it makes words.”
And that it does, for Roethke and Barry, words of rich sadness coming from a ver specific place. Barry writes out of a place he knows well, his west coast hometown of Sligo, near Ox Mountain. His tales of that place are full of damaged characters, rough rural landscapes and lyrical prose, always, the lyricism of death, of madness, of love.
February 26, 2021
Barry writes exquisite lyrical sentences that transport the reader to western Ireland with the all-too-human characters that reside there. Barry has an eye for loners and oddballs—characters that yearn for love, suffer heartache and self-doubt. There is Seamus in ‘The Coast of Leitrim’ who falls hard for Katherine, a Polish immigrant, but has a hard time believing that she could really like him after they start dating; or there is 17-year-old, pregnant Hannah, who waits in a van for her 33-year-old boyfriend (formerly her mother’s boyfriend) to rob a gas station in ‘That Old Country Music’. In ‘Roma Kid’, a 9-year-old girl runs away from the ‘asylum park’ where her family is being kept and forms a beautiful friendship with a hermit in the woods. Enjoy!
May 19, 2021
This was how fatedness worked, how love discovered itself. In the long three days, the endless three nights that led up to their Sunday meeting, he attempted to send mental messages down Dromord Hill and across the slow meander of the river. The content of these messages was even to himself uncertain but had to do with ardency and truth.
*
“I didn’t realise I was so on my own,” he said.
*
I went outside. I had a rush of true feeling. This could be the place for me all right. Maybe the thin film of skin between me and the world would at last here be pierced. I would be at one with the natural things, with mountain, sky, and sea.
*
But now, in Donegal, in the clear light of summer, I was somehow making amends with myself. I let the music play out late and low on Lyric FM. I had the sense that I was deflating the last of my old self, slow breath by slow breath.
*
Love, we are reminded, yet again, is not about staring into each other’s eyes; love is about staring out together in the same direction, even if the gaze has menace or badness underlain.
*
Hannah Cryan came to ascend from herself. Above the green fields and the whitethorn blossom moving in the morning wind, above the stone walls and the Forestry pines, above the inland sea of the grasses, above the broken drone of the motorway, above all of this she measured out the stretch of her seventeen years. They had been mean and slow-feeling years. She was almost as old as the century and felt it.
*
I wonder if I exhaust you sometimes, dear Beatrice? It cannot be an easy ride. But of course I promise to write your name across the stars and years.
*
“I didn’t realise I was so on my own,” he said.
*
I went outside. I had a rush of true feeling. This could be the place for me all right. Maybe the thin film of skin between me and the world would at last here be pierced. I would be at one with the natural things, with mountain, sky, and sea.
*
But now, in Donegal, in the clear light of summer, I was somehow making amends with myself. I let the music play out late and low on Lyric FM. I had the sense that I was deflating the last of my old self, slow breath by slow breath.
*
Love, we are reminded, yet again, is not about staring into each other’s eyes; love is about staring out together in the same direction, even if the gaze has menace or badness underlain.
*
Hannah Cryan came to ascend from herself. Above the green fields and the whitethorn blossom moving in the morning wind, above the stone walls and the Forestry pines, above the inland sea of the grasses, above the broken drone of the motorway, above all of this she measured out the stretch of her seventeen years. They had been mean and slow-feeling years. She was almost as old as the century and felt it.
*
I wonder if I exhaust you sometimes, dear Beatrice? It cannot be an easy ride. But of course I promise to write your name across the stars and years.
August 2, 2020
Kevin Barry is an Irish writer in the very best sense of word. The rhythms and melancholy of Irish banter and the lush beauty and stark isolation of the Irish countryside is always part of his novels.
It is, I think, no accident that he ends his new collection of short stories with a tale about the American poet, Ted Roethke, who spent time with his wife off the coast of County Galway. The poet, whose work was also characterized by intense lyricism and love of the natural world, says at the end of the tale written about him, “…brokenheartedness is the note that sustains always and this he can play at will.”
There is brokenheartedness in these stories as well as yearning and longing that, in sometimes leads to self-recognition. In the opening story, we get a sense of what’s to come when a young man meets a girl who seems too good to be true and manages to blow it (or at least, it appears that way): “He could handle just about anything, he felt, shy of a happy ending.”
We meet a vagrant crouching near a lonely old dog in a Spanish love-starved town and a tiny old man with the smell of the woodlands who rescues a poor knacker childIn one of the more humorous stories, we encounter a man named “Who’s-Dead McCarthy” who is obsessed with death and moves out from reporting on actual occurrences of death to considering in advance the shapes it might yet assume. We come across an old folk singer who narrates a song about a love-possessed herdsman who is cruelly played by the object of his desires. And in “Old Stock” we discover Uncle Aldo, a neer-do-well, whose nephew “inherits” his magic that has “broken the hearts of nuns and blind girls.”
Part poet, part gnome, part chronicler of a timeless yet changing Ireland, Kevin Barry never disappoints. A big thanks to the publisher Doubleday and NetGalley for providing me with a sneak peak of this new collection by a favorite author in exchange for an honest review.
It is, I think, no accident that he ends his new collection of short stories with a tale about the American poet, Ted Roethke, who spent time with his wife off the coast of County Galway. The poet, whose work was also characterized by intense lyricism and love of the natural world, says at the end of the tale written about him, “…brokenheartedness is the note that sustains always and this he can play at will.”
There is brokenheartedness in these stories as well as yearning and longing that, in sometimes leads to self-recognition. In the opening story, we get a sense of what’s to come when a young man meets a girl who seems too good to be true and manages to blow it (or at least, it appears that way): “He could handle just about anything, he felt, shy of a happy ending.”
We meet a vagrant crouching near a lonely old dog in a Spanish love-starved town and a tiny old man with the smell of the woodlands who rescues a poor knacker childIn one of the more humorous stories, we encounter a man named “Who’s-Dead McCarthy” who is obsessed with death and moves out from reporting on actual occurrences of death to considering in advance the shapes it might yet assume. We come across an old folk singer who narrates a song about a love-possessed herdsman who is cruelly played by the object of his desires. And in “Old Stock” we discover Uncle Aldo, a neer-do-well, whose nephew “inherits” his magic that has “broken the hearts of nuns and blind girls.”
Part poet, part gnome, part chronicler of a timeless yet changing Ireland, Kevin Barry never disappoints. A big thanks to the publisher Doubleday and NetGalley for providing me with a sneak peak of this new collection by a favorite author in exchange for an honest review.
January 3, 2021
The writing was going tremendously. I was due to deliver my third novel. The central philosophy underpinning all of my work to date was that places exerted their own feelings — nonsense, of course, half-thought-out old guff that sounded okay at literary events but now, here in Aldo’s cottage, there was incontrovertible evidence that it was the case. In this place I was calm, lucid, settled in my skin, and apparently ravishing . Elsewhere I was, as ever, a bag of spanners.~ Old Stock
This idea that “places exerted their own feelings” does seem to be a recurring theme in Kevin Barry’s work, and to the extent that I have long had a fondness for Irish storytellers writing about their narrow, oppressed lives in mouldering pebbledash cabins under depressing, grey skies, I was delighted to find that the majority of the short stories in That Old Country Music are set in and around Barry’s west coast hometown of Sligo, in the shadow of Ox Mountain, weedy with unlucky whitethorn. For the most part, these stories are melancholic and haunting — exploring loneliness, death, and the yearning for love — and the only thing keeping most of these characters out of the bughouse is their ability to find release in moments of dark humour. This is a truly strong collection of engaging stories and I’ll let Barry speak for himself from here. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
The Coast of Leitrim
Seamus Ferris could bear a lot. In fact, already in his life he had borne plenty. He could handle just about anything, he felt, shy of a happy outcome.
Deer Season
It was the idea of him rather than the fact — the idea of a long, thin, sombre man, in a soak of noble depression, smelling of lentils, in a damp pebbledash bungalow, amid a scrabble of the whitethorn trees, a man ragged in the province of Connacht and alone at all seasons, perhaps already betrothed to a glamorous early death, and under some especially mischievous arrayment of the stars he was all that a girl could ask for.
Ox Mountain Death Song
The Canavans — they had for decades and centuries brought to the Ox elements that were by turn very complicated and very simple: occult nous and racy semen.
Saint Catherine of the Fields
Love, we are reminded, yet again, is not about staring into each other’s eyes; love is about staring out together in the same direction, even if the gaze has menace or badness underlain.
Toronto and the State of Grace
The moving sea gleamed; it moved its lights in a black glister; it moved rustily on its cables.
Who’s Dead McCarthy
Why are you so drawn to it? To death? Why are you always the first with the bad news? Do you not realise, Con, that people cross the road when they see you coming? You put the hearts sideways in us. Oh Jesus Christ, here he comes, we think, here comes Who’s-Dead McCarthy. Who has he put in the ground for us today?
Roma Kid
There were times of great change beyond the woods, but it did not matter, and the noises of the towns sometimes grew frantic — it did not matter; she read her books — and there were times of mobbed voices and great migrations — it did not matter — and there was the time of the fires across the lakes — it did not matter — and the gaseous blue of their after-glare, but all of it soon faded again and passed, and did not matter.
Extremadura (Until Night Falls)
I used to be afraid of the dogs but they got used to me. Ever the more so as I walk I take on the colours and notes of the places through which I walk and I am no longer a surprise to these places. My once reddish hair has turned a kind of old-man’s green tinge with the years and this is more of it. What the ramifications have been for my stomach you’re as well not to know. I have very little of the language, even after all this time, but the solution to this is straightforward — I don’t talk to people. This arrangement I have found satisfactory enough, as does the rest of humanity, apparently, or what’s to be met of it in the clear blue mornings, in the endless afternoons.
That Old Country Music
She looked out across the high fields. Just now as the cloudbank shifted to let the sun break through the whitethorn blossom was tipping; the strange vibrancy of its bloom would not tomorrow be so ghostly nor at the same time so vivid; by tacit agreement with our mountain the year already was turning. The strongest impulse she had was not towards love but towards that burning loneliness, and she knew by nature the tune’s circle and turn — it’s the way the wound wants the knife wants the wound wants the knife.
Roethke in the Bughouse
By the time they get you in the bughouse, usually, the worst of it is over. His left hand rests on his fat belly to feel out each breath as it moves through his ribs and eases him. His right hand lies limply by his side but the index finger is busy and scratches quick patterns on the grey starched sheet — it makes words.
February 3, 2021
Further example of the poetry embedded in the soul of Irish writers. They spin out in ancient styles, but are set in the present The stories sing, sometimes lustily, of rural delights and rascals, with only one that really didn't work for me, but the others make up for it.
July 26, 2020
Some heartfelt stories of longing and loneliness here, emotionally charged in that understated way we have come to expect from Irish writers these days and at which Kevin Barry is a master.
I particularly enjoyed the first one ‘The Coast of Leitrim’ where a young man falls in love but is afraid of committing his heart. Seamus Ferris could bear a lot. In fact, already in his life he had borne plenty. He could handle just about anything, he felt, shy of a happy outcome ..... To experience a feeling as deep as this raised only the spectre of losing it.
My other favourite, which shares some of the same angst, is the title story ‘That Old Country Music’ in which a young girl is disappointed in her dreams of a different life, yet resigned to its inevitability. The strongest impulse she had was not towards love but towards that old burning loneliness, and she knew by nature the old tune’s circle and turn - it’s the way the wound wants the knife wants the wound wants the knife.
Looming over many of the lives here are the mountains of west Ireland, the wilderness just beyond, and Kevin Barry conjures this atmosphere so well.
The day was up and about itself.
The fields trembled.
Catastrophe was a low-slung animal creeping darkly over the ditches, across the hills.
A collection of stories to be savoured, beautiful writing. Highly recommended.
With thanks to Canongate via NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC.
I particularly enjoyed the first one ‘The Coast of Leitrim’ where a young man falls in love but is afraid of committing his heart. Seamus Ferris could bear a lot. In fact, already in his life he had borne plenty. He could handle just about anything, he felt, shy of a happy outcome ..... To experience a feeling as deep as this raised only the spectre of losing it.
My other favourite, which shares some of the same angst, is the title story ‘That Old Country Music’ in which a young girl is disappointed in her dreams of a different life, yet resigned to its inevitability. The strongest impulse she had was not towards love but towards that old burning loneliness, and she knew by nature the old tune’s circle and turn - it’s the way the wound wants the knife wants the wound wants the knife.
Looming over many of the lives here are the mountains of west Ireland, the wilderness just beyond, and Kevin Barry conjures this atmosphere so well.
The day was up and about itself.
The fields trembled.
Catastrophe was a low-slung animal creeping darkly over the ditches, across the hills.
A collection of stories to be savoured, beautiful writing. Highly recommended.
With thanks to Canongate via NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC.
October 25, 2020
'There were times of great change beyond the woods, but it did not matter, and the noises of the towns sometimes grew frantic -- it did not matter; she read her books -- and there were times of mobbed voices and great migrations -- it did not matter -- and there was the time of the fires across the lakes -- it did not matter -- and the gaseous blue of their after-glare, but all of it soon faded again and passed, and did not matter.'
December 10, 2020
Having really enjoyed Night Boat to Tangier (2019) I was keen to sample more of Kevin Barry's writing.
That Old Country Music (2020) is a splendid selection of short stories. I listened to them narrated by the man himself, and given that they are all set in the west of Ireland, his accent and rhythm really added something. The stories are variously lyrical, mysterious, dark, amusing, wry, eloquent, imaginative, magical, and surprising.
Tremendous
4/5
That Old Country Music (2020) is a splendid selection of short stories. I listened to them narrated by the man himself, and given that they are all set in the west of Ireland, his accent and rhythm really added something. The stories are variously lyrical, mysterious, dark, amusing, wry, eloquent, imaginative, magical, and surprising.
Tremendous
4/5
September 3, 2024
‘Dışarı çıktım. İçime bir hakikat dolmuştu sanki. Burası bana göre bir yer olabilirdi pekala. Belki de dünyayla aramdaki ince zar tabakası sonunda burada delinirdi. Doğal şeylerle, dağlarla, gökyüzü ve denizle bir olurdum.’
.
Puslu bir kasaba düşünün, içinde göze batmayan evler, hanelerin içinde günlük hayatına devam eden sıradan insanlar.
Bize ‘sıradan’ görünen insanlar.
Ama her birinin içinde kırılma noktaları var.
Delirenler, annesinin nişanlısına aşık olanlar, boşanıp kendini yollara vuranlar, gittiği kafedeki bir garsonu takıntı haline getirenler.
O kırılma eşiklerinden geçtikten sonra da iki ihtimal doğuyor: bu hikayenin sonu ya iyi biter ya kötü.
İhtimallerin gerçekleştiğini görmemiz ufak birer ayrıntı.
Kısa romanı Tanca’ya Gece Feribotu ile etkileyici bir tanışma yaşadığım Kevin Barry O Eski Türkü’de hikayeleriyle bizimle.
Bu hikayeler bir mevsimlik zamanları anlattığı kadar noksan olduğumuzu vurguluyor. Biz insanlar düşebilen, savrulabilen, yoldan çıkabilen varlıklarız.
Çoğumuz kahraman değil, çoğumuz dünyanın seyrini değiştirmeyecek.
Bir kapıdan mekana giren konuklar kadar geçiciyiz belki.
İşte bunu çok iyi anlatıyor Barry. Derin, karmaşık cümlelerle değil; öyle ters köşeler de yok. Dümdüz. Pek çoğumuzun hikayesi gibi.
Bir oturuşta, keyifle okudum..
.
Begüm Kovulmaz çevirisi, Yasin Çetin kapak tasarımıyla ~
.
Puslu bir kasaba düşünün, içinde göze batmayan evler, hanelerin içinde günlük hayatına devam eden sıradan insanlar.
Bize ‘sıradan’ görünen insanlar.
Ama her birinin içinde kırılma noktaları var.
Delirenler, annesinin nişanlısına aşık olanlar, boşanıp kendini yollara vuranlar, gittiği kafedeki bir garsonu takıntı haline getirenler.
O kırılma eşiklerinden geçtikten sonra da iki ihtimal doğuyor: bu hikayenin sonu ya iyi biter ya kötü.
İhtimallerin gerçekleştiğini görmemiz ufak birer ayrıntı.
Kısa romanı Tanca’ya Gece Feribotu ile etkileyici bir tanışma yaşadığım Kevin Barry O Eski Türkü’de hikayeleriyle bizimle.
Bu hikayeler bir mevsimlik zamanları anlattığı kadar noksan olduğumuzu vurguluyor. Biz insanlar düşebilen, savrulabilen, yoldan çıkabilen varlıklarız.
Çoğumuz kahraman değil, çoğumuz dünyanın seyrini değiştirmeyecek.
Bir kapıdan mekana giren konuklar kadar geçiciyiz belki.
İşte bunu çok iyi anlatıyor Barry. Derin, karmaşık cümlelerle değil; öyle ters köşeler de yok. Dümdüz. Pek çoğumuzun hikayesi gibi.
Bir oturuşta, keyifle okudum..
.
Begüm Kovulmaz çevirisi, Yasin Çetin kapak tasarımıyla ~
October 21, 2020
The inimitable Kevin Barry returns with a veritable feast of short stories, of rural Ireland in the classic mode: full of love (and sex), melancholy and magic, bedecked in some of the most gorgeous prose being written today. This is an eclectic short story collection featuring Barry’s trademark rich prose, perceptive skill and mordant characters who come alive on the pages. As always, his writing probes the dark sides of life — and this includes exploration of loneliness, loss, grief and quiet rumbling despair. A lot of his characters’ could be said to merely exist as opposed to living. The propensity for life to guide you in one miserable direction and then another. The tedium of quotidian life. A pregnant 17-year-old waits for her fiancé to return from robbing a petrol station; a loner falls for a Polish girl working in the local café; a policeman stalks his foe through the brooding Ox Mountains. At each turn, Barry makes his fiction a matter of life and death.
Never less than thought-provoking in nature and vast in scope, Barry delivers us some superb characterisation and plotting all tied together by the Emerald Isle in which they are set whilst gently but firmly reminding us of his exquisite storytelling gift in the process. Those who have loved and enjoyed his work to date will find much to adore amongst this collection of poignant gems. All of his prodigious gifts of language, character, and setting in these eleven exquisite stories transport the reader to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humour and the uncanny power of the primal and unchanging Irish landscape, the stories in That Old Country Music represent some of the finest fiction being written today. Full of the damaged characters, menacing rural scenery and darkly comic, slantwise prose that have become his trademark, this is a melancholy masterpiece. Many thanks to Canongate for an ARC.
Never less than thought-provoking in nature and vast in scope, Barry delivers us some superb characterisation and plotting all tied together by the Emerald Isle in which they are set whilst gently but firmly reminding us of his exquisite storytelling gift in the process. Those who have loved and enjoyed his work to date will find much to adore amongst this collection of poignant gems. All of his prodigious gifts of language, character, and setting in these eleven exquisite stories transport the reader to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humour and the uncanny power of the primal and unchanging Irish landscape, the stories in That Old Country Music represent some of the finest fiction being written today. Full of the damaged characters, menacing rural scenery and darkly comic, slantwise prose that have become his trademark, this is a melancholy masterpiece. Many thanks to Canongate for an ARC.
March 1, 2021
Such a much of a much of an Irishness. It just doesn't get any Irish-er.
April 11, 2025
Sevmiyorum bu öyküleri– her biri yerli yerinde, tamam, eksiksiz.
Ama sayfa kapanınca illa bi’ boşluk kalıyor ya? Bir an evvel dağılmasını dilediğiniz bu uzun sessizlik mesela.
Kitap bitmiş aslında ama bitmemiş; ‘keşke daha uzun olsaydı’ diye zihninizi kaşındıran düşünceler havada asılı kalmış.
Bu hissi hiç sevmiyorum ama işin garibi, artık bu eksik tamamlıkla bile barıştım galiba.
Kısa öyküleri bu kadar iyi yazabilmek de ayrı bi’ mesele çünkü, resmen sanat ya.
Çok iyi kitap.
Ama sayfa kapanınca illa bi’ boşluk kalıyor ya? Bir an evvel dağılmasını dilediğiniz bu uzun sessizlik mesela.
Kitap bitmiş aslında ama bitmemiş; ‘keşke daha uzun olsaydı’ diye zihninizi kaşındıran düşünceler havada asılı kalmış.
Bu hissi hiç sevmiyorum ama işin garibi, artık bu eksik tamamlıkla bile barıştım galiba.
Kısa öyküleri bu kadar iyi yazabilmek de ayrı bi’ mesele çünkü, resmen sanat ya.
Çok iyi kitap.
Read
January 26, 2021No rating. Last year I read this book that was sadly shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Here the Dark: A Novella and Stories. I completely panned it for being sexist, misogynistic and plain distasteful. The stories in That Old Country Music read the same. Why is this published to critical acclaim? Why do men get a pass for this shit? Some of these stories were downright creepy to read. Ew. Needed a shower after reading to cleanse my soul.
January 7, 2021
There are some absolute belters in this very fine collection by a modern master of the art of the short story. The theme that runs through them all, I suppose, is loneliness. But, rather than being depressing or dreary, Barry injects violent life into these tales with humour, both gentle and riotous. He's a real gem.
March 24, 2021
The first two stories were excellent and raised expectations the rest of the collection didn’t fucken meet for me. Almost hokey in its sadsack Irishness at times.
September 27, 2024
3.5/5
Kevin Barry ile ilk tanışmam ve rahatlıkla iyi bir yazar olduğunu söyleyebilirim. Ülkesi İrlanda’yı o kadar güzel anlatıyor ki coğrafya-insan arasındaki bağ ister istemez tamamlanıyor kafamızda. Sürprizlerle şaşırtmak yerine olağanla, gerçekle şaşırtmayı tercih ediyor. Böylece sıradan duranın ne kadar sıra dışı olabileceğini de anlatmış oluyor aslında. Derlemenin bütününe bakarsak ilk üç öyküyü sevsem de diğerlerini o kadar güçlü bulmadım. Fakat yine de hemen hepsinde kayda değer bir karakter ya da an vardı. Bu da oldukça değerli bir şey.
Kevin Barry ile ilk tanışmam ve rahatlıkla iyi bir yazar olduğunu söyleyebilirim. Ülkesi İrlanda’yı o kadar güzel anlatıyor ki coğrafya-insan arasındaki bağ ister istemez tamamlanıyor kafamızda. Sürprizlerle şaşırtmak yerine olağanla, gerçekle şaşırtmayı tercih ediyor. Böylece sıradan duranın ne kadar sıra dışı olabileceğini de anlatmış oluyor aslında. Derlemenin bütününe bakarsak ilk üç öyküyü sevsem de diğerlerini o kadar güçlü bulmadım. Fakat yine de hemen hepsinde kayda değer bir karakter ya da an vardı. Bu da oldukça değerli bir şey.
January 30, 2022
This collection of stories was my first exposure to Kevin Barry. I was absolutely blown away by the gorgeous prose and by the off-kilter and equal parts tragic and darkly comic characters of rural western Ireland. Not every story is perfect, but the dialogue often reminded me of the more lyrical and profane passages from David Milch's Deadwood series.
May 11, 2022
My Irish fiction book group now meets virtually and it has meant new people can drop in when we read something that interests them. This meeting was the biggest yet with 15 people including someone from the opposite coast (Pacific). Kevin Barry is a club favorite and a friend of the Irish arts organization that sponsors the book club. We have followed him since the beginning of his career - 15 or so years ago. In discussing this volume of short stories, some felt that his novels are better than his short stories. I think that this assessment may be based on a readers' personal preference. I love the short story form and have been reading Irish writers' short story collections for decades. Irish writers excel in writing in this genre.
There were themes that were threaded throughout the collection - love, loss, loneliness, and being lost. The final theme "being lost" was at the heart of my favorite story "St. Catherine of the Fields". The narrator is a researcher of "sean-nós" (old style) singing. This is a kind of singing that thrived for centuries in Irish-speaking (Gaelic) areas. It is plaintiff, moving, and powerful. Our narrator is determined to "save" lost sean-nós songs, and goes in pursuit of an elusive singer. He eventually finds a song that is the story of a tragic seduction, a song that had long been "lost". Sean-nos singing is at the center of the 2017 Irish film, Song of Granite, a candidate for Best Foreign Language Film for an Oscar. It is the story of one of the greatest sean-nos singers of the 20th century, Joe Heaney (1919-1984). Heaney spent most of his life outside of Ireland, mostly in England and America. I met him in Boston when friends of mine, native Irish speakers from Costelloe, Ireland, in the Connemara Gaeltacht, brought him from New York for a house party. At the time, in the late 1970's, Heaney was working as a doorman in New York. At the end of his life, he was invited to the University of Washington in Seattle, as a visiting artist. He died in Seattle in 1984.
Another favorite story was "Roma Kid". Over the decades, visiting Dublin, I noted the change in panhandlers in downtown Dublin. In the 70's and 80's, they were most often Travelers, often women with young children. In the 90's, Travelers disappeared from the streets and Roma women and children replaced them. In this story, a young Roma girl is sent off by her family who can no longer care for all their children. The young girl roams the country before she finds shelter. Throughout her life she thinks about the loss of her family, particularly her four young brothers. Of the 13 stories, the only one that wasn't a favorite was the final story about the American poet, Roethke, who had a mental breakdown on the remote island of Inishbofin, near Galway. There is another Inishbofin island in Donegal. Roethke is committed to a psychiatric hospital on the mainland.
Barry is a masterful user of language, and creator of stories. He is a delight to read, and there are depths to plumb in his stories. Highly recommended.
There were themes that were threaded throughout the collection - love, loss, loneliness, and being lost. The final theme "being lost" was at the heart of my favorite story "St. Catherine of the Fields". The narrator is a researcher of "sean-nós" (old style) singing. This is a kind of singing that thrived for centuries in Irish-speaking (Gaelic) areas. It is plaintiff, moving, and powerful. Our narrator is determined to "save" lost sean-nós songs, and goes in pursuit of an elusive singer. He eventually finds a song that is the story of a tragic seduction, a song that had long been "lost". Sean-nos singing is at the center of the 2017 Irish film, Song of Granite, a candidate for Best Foreign Language Film for an Oscar. It is the story of one of the greatest sean-nos singers of the 20th century, Joe Heaney (1919-1984). Heaney spent most of his life outside of Ireland, mostly in England and America. I met him in Boston when friends of mine, native Irish speakers from Costelloe, Ireland, in the Connemara Gaeltacht, brought him from New York for a house party. At the time, in the late 1970's, Heaney was working as a doorman in New York. At the end of his life, he was invited to the University of Washington in Seattle, as a visiting artist. He died in Seattle in 1984.
Another favorite story was "Roma Kid". Over the decades, visiting Dublin, I noted the change in panhandlers in downtown Dublin. In the 70's and 80's, they were most often Travelers, often women with young children. In the 90's, Travelers disappeared from the streets and Roma women and children replaced them. In this story, a young Roma girl is sent off by her family who can no longer care for all their children. The young girl roams the country before she finds shelter. Throughout her life she thinks about the loss of her family, particularly her four young brothers. Of the 13 stories, the only one that wasn't a favorite was the final story about the American poet, Roethke, who had a mental breakdown on the remote island of Inishbofin, near Galway. There is another Inishbofin island in Donegal. Roethke is committed to a psychiatric hospital on the mainland.
Barry is a masterful user of language, and creator of stories. He is a delight to read, and there are depths to plumb in his stories. Highly recommended.
July 30, 2024
Lapped these up very quickly, just hard to put down. Stories of love, heartbreak, darkness, masculinity. Bleak and beautiful all together. Characters that will stick with you. Love Kevin Barry.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 385 reviews