‘Pluck’: based on an Irishman’s panic over a hair on his girlfriend’s chin, this is the story on which I based my short film of the same name (2001). ‘Necessary Noise’: another story suggested by my father, the Bible tale of Martha, Mary and Lazarus transposed to modern New York. ‘The Sanctuary of Hands’: an Irishwoman has an embarrassing encounter in a prehistoric French cave. ‘Good Deed’: a Good Samaritan in present-day Toronto tries to save the life of a street person. ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’: a story about the family of nature and the nature of family, adapted from a short radio play I wrote for BBC Radio 4.
‘The Man Who Wrote on Beaches’: about a Born Again man who decides that Jesus wants him to marry his forty-two-year-old girlfriend and have children. ‘Through the Night’: sparked off by our first baby, this story satirizes both sides of the mother/grandmother generation gap. ‘Lavender’s Blue’: another autobiographical story, this one is about a couple with the painful dilemma of choosing a paint colour. ‘WritOr’: prompted by some of my less happy experiences of teaching creative writing, this is about an existential crisis in the life of a Writer in Residence. ‘Baggage’: this story follows a Limerick woman to LA for one long hot weekend in search of her missing brother. ‘The Dormition of the Virgin’: this comic tale of an earnest English student’s frantic tour of Renaissance churches in Florence is about life vrs art. Touchy Subjects was longlisted for the 2006 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. From the consequences of a polite social lie to the turmoil caused by a single hair on a woman’s chin, it dramatises the small acts upon which our lives often turn. My eighth book of fiction, this collection of contemporary stories about taboos and embarrassment ranges from Ireland to Louisiana, Canada to Tuscany, and includes characters old, young, queer, straight, and simply confused. Touchy Subjects (New York: Harcourt London: Virago, 2006).
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