A Lazy Eye: Stories

by Mary Morrissy

Mary Morrissy, award-winning author of the highly praised first novel Mother of Pearl, offers here a collection of fifteen stories that confirms her place among Ireland's best contemporary writers. Primarily set in the bleak landscapes of modern Ireland, these stories peel away the layers of daily existence, revealing the devastation wrought by the most ordinary of gestures. With a deft hand and a discerning eye, Morrissy writes of private battles waged, past selves, lives measured and remeasured, and of those rare moments of clarity and unobscured vision that grace our lives. In "Rosa", two sisters conspire to perform an unholy nativity. With a mischievous irony, "Divided Attentions" portrays a woman frantically telling her guilty secret to an obscene caller. In the title story, a woman bewildered and misunderstood during a trip abroad begins to comprehend the sum of the small indignities she has undergone. The characters in these stories act out a flawed vision of the world, each seeking redemption and understanding.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published March 27, 1993

About the author

Mary Morrissy (born 1957 Dublin) is an Irish writer. Morrissy was educated at the Rathmines School of Journalism. She worked in Australia, and as a sub-editor of The Irish Press. She taught creative writing for the University of Arkansas, and University of Iowa creative writing summer programmes.

She was a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, for her work-in-progress, The Duchess, an imagined autobiography of Bella O'Casey, the sister of Seán O'Casey. In 2008 - 09, she was Jenny McKean Moore "Writer in Washington" at George Washington University, Washington DC.

Her novel "Mother of Pearl" was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize and longlisted for the Orange Prize in 1996.

Reviews

[Sofie De Smyter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one spectacular collection. Some stories will stay with me always.