First published in The Yellow Nib: The Literary Journal of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, (Volume 5, November 2009). The same story, slightly altered, appears in Hayden’s outstanding debut collection Darker with the Lights On (Little Island Press, 2017). Few books have carried heftier recommendations, with cover endorsements by Eimear McBride, Kevin Barry, Sinéad Gleeson and, er… myself. ‘The Auctioneer’ is narrated with measured formality by a man at a turning-point in his life. It has (like many of Hayden’s short fictions) a haunting, universal quality. Kafka, of course, comes to mind:
“When my wife departed I moved to this bungalow, which is very comfortable in a modest way. I prefer modesty now that humility has been forced upon me. The auctioneer arranged for a cash advance on the balance of those belongings that Ellen did not take with her and with which I no longer wanted to live. He believed that he would achieve a better price for the paintings and furniture at the twice-yearly metropolitan auction; and so it turned out.”
First published in The Yellow Nib: The Literary Journal of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Volume 5, November 2009 and collected in Darker with the Lights On, Little Island Press, 2017
