I once had a dream where I was playing in goal for Liverpool and pinged a long ball over the top of Leicester’s midfield for Colin to bring down and jink past Dewsbury-Hall, to secure an 88th-minute 3-2 winner. My exultant yell woke my family. This has nothing to do with the story. However, his work does bring me a similar, if less weird, form of joy. This story is all shimmer and disquiet, and sad, smoke-touched beauty.
First published in Homesickness, Grove/Jonathan Cape, 2022. You can read an extract from the story at Harper’s, here, and hear Eileen Walsh read it on RTE here
A Personal Anthology 