A kind of gothic fairy tale set in a vivid, sexually charged conjuration of rural Ireland. A pubescent girl refuses to conform to the expected norms of her farming family and its community, precisely evoked by her lively narrative voice. She becomes part of the logging crew helmed by her father, and when she falls for the new lumberjack, a gentle, slow-witted giant, the story takes a turn into darker territory. The girl acts on her fantasies and deliberately seduces him, and he hangs himself, like a noble but innocent Arthurian knight ruined by forbidden love. After the wake, the dance-mad family waltz and reel around the living room with drunken abandon. The girl, either innocently or wilfully refusing to acknowledge her sin, is a willing participant in the bacchanal, and this memorably disturbing story ends exactly on the point before what might be her own fall from grace.
First published in Phoenix Irish Short Stories, Phoenix House, 1997. Collected in Antarctica, Faber & Faber, 1999
A Personal Anthology 