Country of the Grand

Gerard Donovan’s stories in Country of the Grand highlight both his facility with language and his observation of those subtle moments that can act as a hinge to people’s existence. Donovan’s bleak tales at times leave little faith in human relationships, but are all the more powerful in their capturing of those telling moments around bereavement, infidelity and loss. This is a world where people are struggling. Rather than bring situations to resolution Donovan focuses his sharp eye on moments of that struggle, leaving his characters trapped in their situation as we move on to the next tale without them. The stories are all the more wrenching for that, the sensation heightened by the poetry of the language that makes Donovan’s show more tales beautifully hewn settings for our flawed lives. I was left saddened but impressed. show less

I knew nothing of Gerard Donovan or his work when I opened this collection of short stories but I could tell immediately that he was an Irish poet. The language is beautifully lyrical and there is a meditative, sometimes mystical element in his descriptions of ordinary situations and events. There is also a measure of obscurity of meaning which one expects and accepts in poetry but not perhaps in the story form.

Most of the stories in Country of the Grand are set in Galway. They show people dealing with change in their lives against the background of a changing Ireland. Relationships, bereavement, infidelity, abandonment and betrayal are themes running through the stories. Gripping stuff and yet my first reading left me disappointed; I show more found the characters unconvincing, I was unable to imagine them existing outside of the given scenario. Yet I felt there was something I was missing and realised that these were little snapshots of lives, like the dreams and imaginings of the characters in Under Milk Wood. I read the book again, this time hearing, rather than seeing the text and found it far more satisfying.

In Morning Swimmers we watch and listen with Jim as his friends talk about him, not realising that he is there; through this overheard conversation we learn a little about Jim's wife and are left wondering about Jim's relationship with her, what kind of man he is and what he really means to his friends. Loyalty and infidelity are recurring themes in this and several other stories: How long until, Country of the Grand and Another Life.

Loss and bereavement form the basis of several stories. In Glass, fourteen year old Paul has to come to terms with the sudden death of his father and to establish a new relationship with his mother. In The Summer of Birds it is a daughter who is left with her father when her mother leaves home. Another Life shows a grieving widow and The Receptionist a man unable to come to terms with his divorce.

The collection is a mixed bag, some stories I did not like at all but there are a few gems, my favourites being By Irish Nights, which is as mystical as Irish storytelling can be, and The Visit, a moving encounter between a son and his dying mother. show less

Gerard Donovan is that cliché, an Irish writer with a poet’s sensibility. His 2003 debut novel was Schopenhauer's Telescope: trucks arrive with frighten, crying villagers, one man digs a hole, one watches. The result is a stunning and moving discussion that covers everything from the life of Genghis Khan to what exactly, is a hole.

In contrast, his recently published collection of short stories, Country of the Grand, uses musical and witty language to convey the lives of ordinary people in a changing Ireland. Morning swimmers, it’s about the loss of old school friends becoming strangers but it’s also about the compromises we make in marriage to keep the hope of love alive. A theme picked up in How long until when a man driving show more seeing a Life Assurance advert is prompted to ask, how long would you wait before you slept with someone so revealing marriage fault-lines. In other stories such as Shop lifting in the USA we discover the awful lie that the relationship is founded on or in Archaeologists see a relationship in its dying moments. In the Country of the Grand we follow, the events of one evening in the successful and empty live of a lawyer as he acts on the impulse of trying to find the landscape of his childhood. Many of the stories move from the thoughts and actions of the moment to a reflection of the past or as in Glass looking at the pain of a widow through the eyes of her accusing teenage son.

Gerard Donovan is clearly a writer worth reading if you like poetic prose and imaginative stories based on intelligent thought. But the collection of stories suffer as any collection of short stories does by being a random collection of writing enjoyed in the moment of the train journey but once collected together the signature of the writer becomes that much more obvious so less startling or stimulating.

Gerard Donovan use of language and imagery, hover between poems and prose,an good example of this is By Irish Nights . You circle over Ireland following road travellers over one night including those who won’t return as this extract illustrates.

...But those three children. A small breath of water makes a sea of the lungs and sinks the breath.

They found themselves after in languid palms that rested upright in the still water, and they hadn’t drowned. They found themselves in hands sometimes covered in swans that floated, shaped in rain drops that shook the surface of the sky where it rested in the water, in the hold of a father as he taught them to walk, in a mother’s patience as she fed them from spoons and dressed them for the morning. And then they found themselves at last, carved into the endless hearts that lost them, waking every night to sleep.

Its an interesting paradox of our time that in the panic that we can only cope with flash-card writing, short stories are in long decline as we prefer the narrative depth of novels. However, these facts may not be in contradiction, as short stories as poetry require good writing and good reading (close attention to language and structure) to work. Read this collection and decide if its bad writing or poor reading that shapes its future. show less

Other reviews have given a good overview of this collection of short stories.
What I liked: glimpses of the inner lives of ordinary people. By Irish Nights was my favourite piece.
What I disliked: the same tone throughout the collection, that of emotional disconnection, almost flat... It worked well within each story but in a collection, it was difficult for me anyway to keep reading, I felt almost overwhelmed by the mood. It would put you off getting married, or just trying to get close to another human being!
Advice to potential readers: only read one story at a time, interspersed with some other fiction, so you are not as overwhelmed by the mood. But definitely worth reading.

I had never heard of this author but I liked the sound of the book, short stories by an Irish writer. William Trevor has set the bar very high and Donovan did not quite make it. However, I enjoyed most of the "slice of life" stories. The collection had stong opener in Morning swimmers. I also liked How long until, Country of the grand, Archaeologists, Harry Dietz. Some left me scratching my head, New deal for example. His use of poetic language works well, especially in By Irish nights. I might well read some of his other stuff.

I was delighted to hear that I'd bagged another LibraryThing review copy by a writer whose work was new to me, Gerard Donovan. And a collection of short stories to boot - Country of the Grand. (I do love a good short story.) Its arrival coincided with Susan Hill's article in the Guardian Review (12 July) on short-story prizes, in which she makes some salient points about the genre:

"The best short stories are perfect examples of how to write - how to make few words do the work of many, how to encapsulate and to crystallise. When I need a writing lesson, I go to a great short story. That is why they are so beloved of creative writing courses. People can be taught more easily via short-story writing, and they are shorter to assess. But show more they are by no means easier to write. The short-story form is unforgiving. Beginners begin there at their peril and yet they continue to do just that."

Imagery, for example, has to work two or three times as hard in a short story as it does in a full-length novel. And some of the best short stories begin with a memorable, single image.

Country of the Grand made it to the shortlist of this year's Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award (mentioned by Susan Hill) so I was still expecting good things. According to the publisher's blurb, Donovan's themes touch on 'New Ireland', a country in change but that, unfortunately, reminded me of James Joyce's Dubliners. I say, unfortunately, because for me, Dubliners will always be at the apex of short story writing. Joyce casts a long shadow and was also writing at a time of enormous upheaval in his mother country. But there the parallels and comparisons stop. It must be 25 years or so since I read Dubliners but much of what I read, especially the imagery, is still fresh in my mind. I doubt, sadly, that I would be able to say the same of Country of the Grand.

There is a flatness to the writing which makes it hard for the reader to engage with the characters, even those who are going through some sort of emotional turmoil: couples caught up in marital meltdown appear frequently. If I hadn't been in review mode, I would probably have put this book aside after the second story but I soldiered on - and it did feel like a duty rather than a pleasure. In Harry Dietz (set in the USA), an elderly and increasingly confused man tries to negotiate his way around the city he has known all his life. At the end, I was as confused as Harry; I'll probably remember the story but for all the wrong reasons. In an otherwise patchy collection, two stories stand up reasonably well, however: Archaeologists, in which two Irelands, ancient and modern, are juxtaposed, and The Summer of Birds, which captures a 10-year-old girl's sense of loss when her mother leaves the family home.

Gerard Donovan's novels, including Schopenhauer's Telescope and Julian Winsome have generally been well received so perhaps his writing is stronger in the novel form; I'd like to think that Country of the Grand is untypical.
This review forms part of a longer post on my blog, which you can find here:
http://60goingon16.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/07/the-short-and-t.html show less

I'm not the world's greatest expert on the short story so don't really know how to go about reviewing this collection.

Suffice to say at this stage, that I thoroughly enjoyed the book, finding the stories quite moreish. Some struck me as unfinished (particularly Harry Dietz) but, in the main, I enjoyed the drama of the various situations. The characters came across as quite human and I had vivid pictures of the body language each used.

I'll probably go back and read some of Donovan's novels now.

Full review at: http://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/country-of-the-grand-gerard-donovan/

Notes on Donovan's appearance at this year's Edinburgh Book Festival at: http://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2008/08/12/lizzy-at-the-ebf-2/