A Son of the Rock

Penguin, 1970, 166 p.

This is a collection (her first) of the author’s short fiction. The stories date from the 1960s.

The object of the affections of the narrator of the title story tells her at the start that he doesn’t intend “a mean and squalid little affair” with her, that instead they would become friends, but a mean and squalid little affair is what it turns out to be.

An Outing describes another affair, this time unconsummated, between a woman only ever referred to as Mrs Farley, who is unhappy with her husband. The other man is someone she had seen casually at bus stops but suddenly notices has been missing. When he turns up again (after being ill) they realise their affection for each other.

The Rug was delivered, with no clue from whom, to the narrator’s childhood home and immediately became her mother’s pride and joy. Her feckless father allowed himself to be thought of as the agent of its arrival through one of his many acquaintances; but of course it wasn’t.

The Mouth of the Cave is a tale of frustrated hope. A woman on a walk to a nearby village sees another rise from the ground and begin to dress. Thereafter she waits for the other to turn up at her house for dinner, only to be disappointed. She avoids that route from then on.

How to Grow a Wisteria has nothing to do with gardening. Rather it is about slowly coming to terms with yourself and the opportunities lost while you are doing so.

In Irish Revel a seventeen-year-old Irish farm girl goes to her first party at the hotel in the nearby town. It’s a disappointing affair all round.

Cords is the tale of an Irish farm-wife visiting her daughter Claire in London, a daughter whose ways she finds far too modern, but who cannot be her true self while her mother is there. The visit paradoxically moves them apart but also closer.

Paradise is set in a Mediterranean resort where a woman finds herself in a doomed attempt to fit in with the set of acquaintances of her relatively new – and older – lover. He has set her the task of learning to swim while there. She eventually succeeds but the vacuousness of it all starts to get to her.

Pedant’s corner:- ecstacies (ecstasies,) saccharine (not sickly sweet; it was the sweetener, sacharrin,) cow lats (cow pats makes more sense,) “her breathe” (breath,) connexion (connection,) instuctor (instructor,) “would not leave go of her”(is this an Irish formulation? ‘Would not let go of her’ sounds far more natural to me,) light-house (lighthouse.)