That Old Country Music

That Old Country Music was an ARC copy provided by Netgalley in exchange for a review.

This collection of short stories is published in the UK in October 2020. I thought this was a brilliant read. I'm a bit of a tough sell on short stories, I don't always stick with them, so I think it's a testament to the writer that I found the stories here so engrossing. Characters are diverse, from a Roma child on the run to an American poet in a psychiatric hospital (a fictionalisation of Theodore Roethke's experience). ("When you say you're going into work, as a writer, what you mean is you're about to crawl into your fucking nerves.") A story about a musicologist translating a lost ballad about a doomed Irish couple working in Lancashire, who show more loved to sing, beautifully evokes the poetry of 'traditional' music ("The merest, glancing line gave somehow the sombre bricks and industrial smoke of England's Victorian north, and those brassy old pubs loomed above the verse, like lanterns in the dark of the long-lost singing nights.") Some were surprisingly romantic and sweet, others needled the idea of writing and writers. One I will be buying for myself when it comes out in paperback. show less

In the title story the need of two young people for each other is overwhelming, but uncertain. The ending is abrupt but highly satisfying. A sneakily good love story. In Deer Season a seventeen year-old seduces an older, somewhat vulnerable man, to the seeming detriment of them both. A standout line: “She entered a spell of heavy dreaming or quietude such as can open out sometimes in youth if the person is to be an artist.”

In Old Stock a man inherits a cottage in Sligo from his uncle, who claims with some of his last words it has some type of magic. “I can’t explain it but the women go mental fucken gamey as soon as they get a waft of the place at all.” And it appears to be so. “In this place I was calm, lucid, settled in my show more skin, and apparently ravishing. Elsewhere I was, as ever, a bag of spanners.”

A “connoisseur of death” stalks the streets of Limerick announcing the passing of people far and wide. When asked about his obsession with death, he says “I find it very…impressive.” Another man wanders Spain, talking with dogs and avoiding people due to a broken heart. In Roma Kid, almost a fairy tale or legend, a young refugee runs away and finds herself in the Ox Mountains with a broken ankle, where her life is saved and made whole.

The characters are often on the fringes of society and all the more observant and interesting for it. show less

This is Kevin Barry's 3rd collection of short stories, set in small town and rural Ireland. I have a couple of his novels TBR but this is the first book by Kevin Barry I've actually read.

I thought many of the stories were about people looking for a way to deal with loneliness by making connections with others. In The Coast of Leitrim, Seamus is attracted to a Polish woman working in a cafe in town, and asks her out, but the idea of a relationship after being on his own for some time is kind of scary. In Roma Kid, a girl runs away from the responsibility of looking after her little brothers and finds a new life with an informal adoptive father figure.

These and other stories in the collection are interesting, but the characters remain a show more little too shadowy and mysterious for me. show less

The stories might sometimes feel as if they are “playing to the gallery”, but they are so fine, I didn’t care, they’re so enjoyable. Possibly the best story is the first, The Coast of Leitrim. I also really enjoyed Roma Kid, but it petered out, taking an easy exit.

Despite the quality of the writing, KB can conjure up a similie that other authors would lose limbs for; there's a still a hit and miss feel to this. The swearing seems forced for some reason and the last story I found irritiating and not fitting with this collection. The theme is here is love, mostly lost love and being set in Ireland, rain plays a major part too and a linking at times to the land itself.
He's still a author whose command of language puts in a league of his own but I still don't think he's ever re-hit the heights of 'beer trip to Llandulo' which is for me, one of the most perfect short stories ever written. Still worth checking out though, the fact that all reviews on here mention different tales as their favourite show more shows how subjective the short story format is. Roma Kid was incredibly poignant. show less

3.5 My first read of Kevin Barry, this grouping of short stories, but this definitely will not be my last.
His writing is rich, descriptions sublime, such as this found in the story, Toronto and the State of Grace, "The hills displayed with arrogance the richest of autumn and glowed, and I walked in a state of almost blissful sadness." This also happens to be one of the stories that has stayed with me. Many of the stories exude loneliness, melancholy, but for some reason I found this one a tax amusing. Well, until the ending but even that seemed fitting.

I also liked the title story, the realism was spot on and I again appreciated the ending, which wasn't sad so much as accepting, this is how it is, and was for me unexpected.

This was a show more read with Angela and Esil and all three of us loved and favored Roma Kid. Just a wonderfully written piece full of meaning, making the most of what you have and finding a home when you least expect. A beautiful and poignant story.

Their is liberal use of the F word throughout and two of the stories for me, didn't work. On the whole though this is a well drawn collection of shorts.

ARC from Edelweiss show less

This is a collection of short stories set in rural Ireland. It was quite the mixed bag--enjoyed a few, couldn't wait for others to get over with. It seemed to me that Barry was trying to show the diversity of Irish society. There's one about a lonely guy who falls in love with a Polish waitress, another about a Romany girl who escapes a detention center and runs away to the forest, one about American poet Theodore Roethke ending up in an Irish "bug house" after a nervous breakdown. (I found this last one particularly annoying. It's a boring, pretentious dialogue between Roethke and the psychologist, without quotation marks or signals as to who is speaking.) For me, the first story, "The Coast of Leitrim"--the one about the Polish show more waitress--was the best, and it kind of went downhill for me from that point. show less