William & Mary C. (Donohoe) Lyons
Willam F . & Mary C. (Donohoe) Lyons
bob_lyon
IRISH SHORT STORIES
Read Aloud From
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CLAIRE KEEGAN reads her award winning story, "Foster" on RTE Radio.
Set on a farm in County Wicklow, around the time of the IRA hunger strikes, Foster begins early on a Sunday after Mass, a “hot day, bright, with patches of shade and greenish, sudden light along the road”. The narrator, a young girl, is being taken by her father to stay with relatives while her mother gets ready to give birth.
Brian Friel
Selected Stories
Friel's first fictions found expression in the short story form. Although primarily recognized as a playwright, Friel is also known for his short stories set in the border region between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic that explore the lives of characters who struggle with strict social, religious, and moral conventions. Themes of poverty, dissillusionment, the role of childhood memories, and man's connection to nature, reappear in his drama. *******
TEN short stories by Brian Friel are read below by Donal Donnelly, Irish actor, who embodied a variety of Irish characters on the American stage and in American movies, notably in the plays of Friel, and in John Huston's adaptation of James Joyce's “The Dead.”
On the west coast of Ireland there are wild, lonely places where few visitors come. A boy on his yearly visit to his grandmother tells a tale of the simple life, when a travelling salesman from a farway land finds a kindness he did not expect.... "On the first day of every new year, I made the forty-five mile jurney by train, post van, and foot across County Donegal to my grandmother's house..." Read by Patrick Moy: >>LISTEN 24.32 mins.
The Skelper by Brian Friel
The New Yorker, August 1, 1959
Before he was a week in the village of Bennafreaghan, in Ireland, the Skelper must have sensed that no one liked him. He was the kind of man who attracts unpopularity - a big, shapeless figure with an air of mocking superiority about him. He tried to make friends in the pub, but was not too successful.
Then he made a bet with the postman, Quigley. Everyone knew that Quigley was a poacher. The Skelper made a bet that he could take a fish quicker than Quigley from a local stream. A contest was arranged & most of the neighborhood men came to watch. Quigley won, but a policeman came along, and the poor man would have been arrested & lost his job if the Skelper had not gotten him out of the jam with a quick, glib excuse to the policeman. He thus won everyone's regard.
>>Listen
Copyright 2010 Willam F . & Mary C. (Donohoe) Lyons. All rights reserved.
FRANK O'CONNOR of Cork.
Ireland's best known short story writer with over 50 published in The New Yorker, reads three of his classic stories; two others follow.
FRANK O'CONNOR: A Life "Cork author Jim McKeon's biography of the Irish writer Frank O'Connor (1903-66) is almost as readable as any fiction told by his subject." New York Times review, July 11, 1999 >>Read Review
MAEVE BRENNAN'S "Christmas Eve", read by Roddy Doyle.
It was Christmas Eve in Dublin and Delia Bagot was preparing her children, Margaret and Lily, for bed. Her husband, Martin, was downstairs reading the paper waiting to come to say good-night to them.>>LISTEN 31:15
Master writer from Cork with over 40 published in The New Yorker, reads two of his classic short stories at 92nd Street Y, New York City.
JOHN McGAHERN'S "The Wine Breath", read by Yiyun Li.
"A priest suddenly begins to recall the day of Michael Bruen's funeral nearly 30 years before. Ever since his mother's death, he'd found himself stumbling into the dead days. It was as if the world of the dead was as available to him as the world of the living." >LISTEN 37:52
Seán O'Faoláin,
Seán O'Faoláin ONE TRUE FRIEND 41 mins.
A novelist and short-story from Co Clare, O'Brien is a novelist and short-story writer whose works often revolve around the inner feelings of women, and their problems in relating to men and to society as a whole. >>LISTEN 13:55 mins.
JOHN B. KEANE Listowel Co Kerry
Fred Spellacy, the postman, would always remember the Christmas as a period of unprecedented decision-making which had improved his lot in the long term.
>The Magic Stoolin 14.16 mins.
I was tempted for a while to call this story A Christmas Barrel. Everybody, I told myself, has heard of A Christmas Carol so why not A Christmas Barrel. My wife thought the title too stereotyped when I submitted it for her approval.
>WATCH Peat Fireplace 1:41 hrs.
Where glows the hearth with peat
There lives a subtle spell
The faint blue smoke, the gentle heat,
The moorland odours, tell
From cottage doors that lure us in
From rainy western skies,
To seek the friendly warmth within,
The simple talk and wise.
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Copyright 2010 Willam F . & Mary C. (Donohoe) Lyons. All rights reserved.
Willam F . & Mary C. (Donohoe) Lyons
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