Christina’s Reviews > There Are Little Kingdoms > Status Update

'As soon as he was untagged, Joe would move up, and they would set about building their new life together. She had at last found her soul mate. She had known from the very first moment, six weeks ago.'

'She had moved from city to city and from town to town, propelled by a talent for hopeless optimism.'

'Eat the world up, Ralph. Make a meal out of the place. Stop hiding in a junk shop down a filthy fucking quay. Get on with it! And name for me your second wish, please.'
   Ralph pales.
   'Is this about my wife?' he says.
   The genie sighs, and throws his hands up. Why is he always given the fuckwits?

'She drained what was left of the second cabernet, made a start on the fresh. From a wallet of fine snakeskin she placed a note on the table.
"One yourself, sir?"
"Thanks, I won't," said Mr. Kelliher. "I haven't drank in years."
"Oh?"
"It wasn't agreeing with me. A doctor put me on the spot and said I wouldn't see forty"
"And now you've seen it," she said. "has it been worth it?"
"Arguable," he said.'

'He chewed a lip and sulked. He had enough of the place. He was going to take off, no question, one of these fine days, they wouldn't see his arse for dust. They'd be sorry then, and they listening to Sonny Byrne and his cheese—big fucking piano tunes. The major problem would be the shipment of the records. There were several thousand and that amounted to serious dead weight.'

'A fantasy of the village maintained by Daly was that its people were hearty, hill country eaters, as they had been in the days of his father's butchering. He shot and skinned the rabbits himself and hung them for weeks until they were all but maggoty. Forlornly, then they'd be brought home to feed the family of Dalys, who had rabbit coming out their ears.'

'This was a young man listening to enough country and western music to believe just about anything. But he never tried to foretell the detail of it. He never tried to picture it actually come true. Was she really going to float down from the starry sky and put in an appearance on O'Connell Street some Saturday? Walk up to the big tank called Foley and tap him on the shoulder? Settle down and raise enormous children?'

'...he unscrewed the bottle of Cork gin and got good and familiar with it. ...He was familiar with the motions of alcohol. The elevations of mood were no news to him, nor the sudden dips. He knew what it was like to drink big in small towns—it was hard work sometimes, you had to have the same good time over and over again.'

'Well, Teresa, he said, this is Wicklow, this is March, what were you expecting exactly? This isn't the Canaries we're talking about. Anyway, you don't feel it with the fleece on you. From the way you were going on, the two of you, I thought you were well used to the hills. Hah? This is what I was led to believe, Teresa.'