Being Various, edited by Lucy Caldwell, is an excellent anthology of recent Irish writing. I could have picked several of the stories, including Kit de Waal’s ‘May the Best Man Win’ or ‘Mikey Mullholland’ by Wendy Erskine, but Danielle McLaughlin’s story is the one I keep returning to. It won the Sunday Times/Audible Short Story Award in 2019. A man flies back from the United States to his native Northern Ireland for his dad’s eightieth birthday. He invites his ex-wife to go with him because he hasn’t told his father about their divorce. His sister, who has been looking after their dad, is at her wits’ end. Meanwhile the old man appears to be in a relationship with the housekeeper. McLaughlin imbues this messed-up family dynamic with humour, tension and underlying resentment and love. A visit to the Titanic museum in Belfast and a sighting of a memorial to four men who died during the War of Independence place the drama into wider contexts in this beautifully restrained story.
Published in Being Various, edited by Lucy Caldwell, Faber, 2019; read online here
A Personal Anthology 