Description

‘For over thirty years, Eoin McNamee has been one of the outstanding writers of his generation’ David Peace
‘McNamee’s books are intense and compressed, but so carefully worked that they read smoothly’ The Times
‘Eoin McNamee is the poet laureate of the visionary dark’ Colum McCann

By the author of The Bureau and Resurrection Man, a complete collection of Eoin McNamee’s shorter fiction, published in one volume for the first time.

Each of these stories is a world to itself, steeped in eerie beauty.

A frosty northern witch changes the life of a twelve-year-old girl by teaching her that women keep their dreams in their hair. The wondrous souls of the dead become bright comets arcing over a seaside town. A girl on fire runs through the snow, and a woman on the run is transformed into an ice queen by her own will. Lives unravel and are remade and if they are lost they are lost to beauty.

At once realist and magical, contemporary and timeless, The Comets confirms Eoin McNamee’s status as one of Ireland’s greatest prose stylists and a storyteller of inalienable power.

Publisher Review

Eoin McNamee is the poet laureate of the visionary dark. He has consistently probed the edges where other writers fear to go, and he has earned his comparisons with writers as diverse as Cormac McCarthy, James Ellroy, Don deLillo, Kate Atkinson and so many others. In this volume of short fiction the style and the language stretch in endless directions. The Comets is a small, precise treasure. McNamee continues to be one of my favourite writers. * Colum McCann * McNamee uses dynamite prose with precision to explode what lies beneath in these tales set in coastal communities * RTE Guide *