Departures

By Jennifer C. Cornell

Book Overview

The stories in this extraordinary collection are set in Northern Ireland, specifically Belfast, the center for more than thirty years of fighting between Roman Catholic nationalists and Protestants loyal to the British crown. Cornell is not preoccupied, however, with the details of the war. Her stories explore the emotional and psychological consequences of the struggle to endure not only violence, but loss, failure, and the inability to believe.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822956047
• ISBN13: 9780822956044
• Release Date: March 1996
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful book

This is a book that reads more like poetry than a novel. It's rich and sensual imagery allows the reader to become a participant observer of the events that are not always readily understood. Once you just allow yourself to become a part of the scenery, and to let the images wash over you, then you begin to be rewarded. This book brought tears of many emotions for me. It is filled with real, honest people, living real, honest lives, and like life it is both humorous and depressing, joyful and oppressed, desperate and free.

Wonderful, thought-provoking stories by a Unique Individual

The characters in each of the stories in this book are so real that sometimes it is frightening, but in the very best way. I was completely engrossed (shocked, touched, amazed) by each tale. I discovered Jenny's writing after taking a Creative Writing course under her tutelage at a university in upstate New York. On the last day of class she let us read "Touched." I read it the first time, and thought it was good. I read it again a few months later, understood it much better and thought it was great. I then proceeded to read the rest of the stories and was completely amazed. (I think if I had read these stories *before* I took the class, I would have been too intimidated to let her see my own writing.) This is a terrific group of stories, and I wish I could read some more of her writing.