It turns out that everything I felt about Trespasses I felt about this collection of short stories though the greater truths revealed by the relationships depicted here are about the ways women are socialized and the ways that limits them. I believe this collection was the first thing Kennedy published (at the age of nearly 50) and I am therefore rather awed by her surefootedness. She has had the time to learn about people and see their lives and used that time well. The complexity of these characters is astonishing. We learn so much about them in the small space of each story and I empathized with every one.

Overall I would say this is a 4.5 for me with the deduction coming from Kennedy's treatment of the male characters. Many women write rich male and nonbinary characters, this is not an own-voices issue, but there is a sameness to Kennedy's men and the things that drive them. I found them hard to distinguish at certain times. I occasionally found myself in the middle of a story and realized I was conflating the male lead in that story with one from the previous story. These men are all crammed full of feelings they have no way to process or express, feelings they work out through sublimation or by straight-up deception followed by repentance and/or self-flagellation. For the most part, Kennedy is telling women's stories so this is not a huge issue, but in a couple of stories she gives the reader a male POV and those stories were weaker than the others in the collection. Overall though, this is just an unrelenting pleasure to read (which is not to say it is filled with happiness, quite the opposite.) ( )

Kennedy's writing is very fluid and evocative, but every single one of these stories had the exact same tone, and it was a depressing one. ( )

After loving Louise Kennedy's fine novel, I was eager to read her short story collection. Kennedy's short stories have a melancholic feel to them and concern themselves with relationships, between spouses, between relatives, between lovers, or the aftermath of those relationships. These are not people who are thriving, but who are frustrated, or sad or simply trying to get through each day. They are beautifully told and there are few writers who can bring to life fully realized settings and situations in just a few sentences. ( )

I have read several of Kevin Barry’s short story collections in the last couple of years, but these are altogether rawer Irish stories.
I am thinking that the titular story is the finest, but they’re all fine, and generally make for fairly bleak writing. The last story, Garland Sunday, packs a punch too.
I’m British, so the history underlying the stories is familiar to me and the occasional Irish words are readily understandable from their context, if I didn’t already know them. ( )

I purchased this book in a quaint little book shop hidden along the cobbled streets of Dublin. However, my first interaction with this book was in the gift shop within the Irish National Gallery Museum. The description of the book drew me in with its various gritty stories and Irish culture, however when I started to read I found it quite difficult to grasp the concept of each story being so short. It almost makes each story seem as though its not that important?! ( )