Come Back Irish

By Wendy Mai Rawlings

Book Overview

Nine inhabitants of a sleepy Irish seaside town tell what they know about a visitor from out of town who is rumored to be both attractive and dangerous. A young mother in an affluent Long Island community finds herself strangely drawn to the woman she has hired as her housekeeper. After her small business venture fails, a woman is forced to move back in with her parents and discovers they aren't the couple she thought they were at all. In fourteen expertly crafted stories, Wendy Rawlings chronicles with comic sympathy what happens when American women and Irish men, parents and children, employers and employees, hurtle toward each other and crash headlong into cultural or generational roadblocks. Like the American in the title story, who can imagine only a "litter of claddagh rings and Erin go bragh, the high-stepping of Riverdance on videocassette" until she gets on a plane and goes to Ireland, Rawlings's fiction entreats us to toss out the picture-perfect images we have of American consumer culture, Irish tourist towns, and the institution of marriage and enter the world of her fictions-more contradictory, troubling, and true.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814250858
• ISBN13: 9780814250853
• Release Date: January 2021
• Publisher: Ohio State University Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Come Back Again and Again

When I pick up fiction, if the first sentence doesn't do it for me, I don't read on. I'm a HUGE snob and I don't want to waste my time and pleasure reading anything less than outstanding work. Wendy Rawlings' debut not only has unfailingly good first sentences starting each of these funny and hauntingly disturbing stories, but all the words that follow are crafted so they snap and crackle and move a reader to keep turning the pages. Her characters live in emotional liminal spaces between love and isolation, connection and alienation, humor and tragedy, and these things can turn on a dime, it seems, so good is the writing.There is a whole originality to her voice that is reminiscent of Ann Beattie, Alice Munro, Eudora Welty, and others, but it is in no way derivative. Ms. Rawlings can compress her words so they pack a punch of epiphany and she can paint a picture in a scene that can break your heart. Turn to any page randomly and you'll find little jewels (my other test of good fiction) of prose, character, and pure story.If you want a read that you will take with you to your job, infiltrate your everyday conversations, that you will read to your girlfriend or boyfriend, husband, wife, or lover, here is the stuff that great writing careers start with. Welcome, Wendy Rawlings. We're gonna come back again and again!

Bottoms Up

The booze (mostly Guinness stout) flows freely in many of the stories in this fine collection, but the author never loses her focus or slurs a single word. Wendy Rawlings gives us fourteen gems--stories cut as clean as diamonds, light beaming from their many facets--and she presents them on a deep black velvet background of love, passion, wit, and unflinching insight. Anyone who's ever searched for their "proper" place in the world, but had trouble finding it; anyone who's ever wondered who their friends and loved ones really are; anyone who's ever known the shock (and the thrill) of having their lives turned upside down--in short, everyone who's living in our topsy-turvy times--will love this beautifully written book.

A wonderful book!

Several of the stories included in Wendy Rawling's first collection of stories actually take place in Ireland and/or include Irish people, but it is the distinction between the Irish perception of the world and ours that is at the heart of her work. In the title story, the main character Beth learns that the English language is weighted toward "action, control, independence." We say things like, "I am happy. I am sad." Whereas the Irish language (and Rawlings' work by extension) recognizes the distinction between action and patience: "I exist sadly. Sadness exists on me." In each of these stories the protagonist is asked to respond to a world which she has no "control" over; a world which often feels like a foreign country. In "Heteroworld" the main character learns that her mother is gay and the story examines her reaction to this new and complex reality. A young girl in "Lily's the Maid" bears witness to domestic violence and then looks back on it years later with a more mature perspective. Other characters cope with pregnancy, mysterious rashes, abortion and cancer, and yet, far from being depressing, Rawlings' characters meet these universal travails with both humor and startling insights. There is, for instance, this great line on growing older: "Each of them was rubbing baby oil on her own belly, her mother in the ashamed, self-conscious way Gretchen would later recognize as the way of most adult women." Two of my favorite stories are "Lovely" and "Acetate." Both deal with women learning to get by in what remains largely a man's world. On the surface "Acetate" is the story of a relationship gone awry and an abortion. Nell gets pregnant and her boyfriend Drummond moves away soon after her abortion. Even as the narrator (Nell's bestfriend) studies for a "Women's Studies" midterm about the birth control dilemmas of women in Tudor England, she is witnessing a parallel scenario unfold for Nell as she comes to terms with her own unwanted pregnancy. We are left to ask ourselves how much has really changed for women today? "Lovely" is the story of a young woman's odyssey through Ireland where she meets several men, all of whom want something from her but offer her nothing meaningful in return. At one point a woodcarver draws a picture of a mountain range. The protagonist says, "He meant for me to see that they were a woman's breasts and womb." But in the end she decides, "They did not look like a women at all." Most of the time in Rawlings' stories, the men get it wrong, but the women eventually find their way despite them. In most of these stories, living is like traveling through a foreign country. Just like a tourist we watch the world unfold around us. Most of what happens to us; happens to us. We may "exist sadly" or not, but everything depends on how well we handle the fact that we are not in control.

Finally!

Why this book is not in the front window of every major bookstore in America is a mystery to me. Finally, in Rawlings we have a contemporary female writer who can address being single without simpering, who writes about the complications and complexities of love, family, travel and independence, with an earthy mix of sincerity and wit. Rawlings voice is confident and wry as she weaves together the many themes and characters found in this smart, sharp, lovely, funny book.