Status Updates From The Boatman and Other Stories

This is really good

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

Most of this is relentlessly,guttingly sad, but O'Callaghan has a mordant sense of humor and boy oh boy can he write.

I thought The Border Fox and The Boatman had scooped out my organs. Then I read Ruins and realized some of them must have survived because I was eviscerated anew. I have read so many extraordinary books set during The Troubles -- The Border Fox was among the best. Its truths are so universal and so relevant.

In terms of the things they built, the Romans were forever. These great constructions were their veins and muscles, these aqueducts, roads, statues and amphitheatres, their flesh and blood and bones. [...] Yet it was also all just stone. Grand, beautiful, ingenious and built to last, but still, ultimately, nothing more than the boast above the grave, markers commemorating those otherwise forgotten.

I like some of the stories more than others. But all are exceedingly well written.