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Country of the grand

In this collection Donovan sets out to dismantle the received notion of ‘Irishness’—that list of stock subjects and stylistic features that Francis Stuart termed ‘the soft centre of Irish writing.’ Stories deliberately work against the Irish literary tradition whereby, for instance, the ‘rural’ is deemed both prison and classroom; where religion is both character and subject; where childhood was a time of misery and stunted growth. The collection thus purports to move beyond Irish ‘clichés’ in its bid to offer concrete presentations of ‘real’ lives navigating difficulties. At the same time, Donovan’s goal is to avoid a false diversity or indeed any implied characterisation of ‘the new’ as an alternative to the world he’s intent on treating. Research into not just Ireland, but modern Irish fiction (from Joyce to Colum McCann) was thus paramount to the composition of the book.

Set during the peak years of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ in Ireland (2000-2008), the aim is not argumentative so much as socially satiric (though written as ‘realist’ fiction), a desire to explore those persons who bought into the economic phenomenon. This manifests in material that stresses the unsaid, a mode more readily adopted by American short story writers (such as Raymond Carver) for their exploitation of the anecdote in works which are deliberately anti-epiphanic. The collection’s research imperatives ask the reader to re-appraise Irish literature’s representations of the Irish ‘national identity’; a task which is exacerbated in the chosen themes – eg. betrayal, the gradual loss of the past, and the wilful destruction of national historical objects. The fact that stories appeared in anthologies of ‘Irish’ literature, won ‘Irish’ prizes, and appeared as an ‘Irish’ story in an examination booklet, is notable especially since the book intends to challenge its own inclusion as purporting a national literature.