The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers

By Sinéad Gleeson

An instant classic, The Long Gaze Back, edited by Sinéad Gleeson, is an exhilarating anthology of thirty short stories by some of the most gifted women writers this island has ever produced. Featuring: Niamh Boyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Maeve Brennan, Mary Costello, June Caldwell, Lucy Caldwell, Evelyn Conlon, Anne Devlin, Maria Edgeworth, Anne Enright, Christine Dwyer Hickey, Norah Hoult, Mary Lavin, Eimear McBride, Molly McCloskey, Bernie McGill, Lisa McInerney, Belinda McKeon, Siobhán Mannion, Lia Mills, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Kate O'Brien, Roisín O'Donnell, E. M. Reapy, Charlotte Riddell, Eimear Ryan, Anakana Schofield, Somerville & Ross, Susan Stairs. Taken together, the collected works of these writers reveal an enrapturing, unnerving, and piercingly beautiful mosaic of a lively literary landscape. Spanning four centuries, The Long Gaze Back features 8 rare stories from deceased luminaries and forerunners, and 22 new stories by some of the most talented Irish women writers working today. The anthology presents an inclusive and celebratory portrait of the high calibre of contemporary literature in Ireland. These stories run the gamut from heartbreaking to humorous, but each leaves a lasting impression. They chart the passions, obligations, trials and tribulations of a variety of vividly-drawn characters with unflinching honesty and relentless compassion. These are stories to savour.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Island
• Release date: Aug 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781848404212

Book preview

Cover image for Title

THE LONG

GAZE BACK

THE LONG

GAZE BACK

An Anthology of

Irish Women Writers

Edited by

Sinéad Gleeson

THE LONG GAZE BACK

First published in 2015 by

New Island Books

16 Priory Hall Office Park

Stillorgan

County Dublin

Republic of Ireland

www.newisland.ie

Editor’s Introduction © Sinéad Gleeson, 2015

Individual stories © Respective authors, 2015

‘A Bus from Tivoli’ by Kate O’Brien was originally published in Threshold, Vol 1 No 2, Summer 1957). Reprinted by the permission of David Higham as agents for the author.

‘When Miss Coles Made the Tea’ is from The Cocktail Bar by Norah Hoult, published by William Heinemann and reprinted by permission of the Random House Group Limited.

‘The Demon Lover’ is from The Demon Lover and Other Stories by Elizabeth Bowen, published by Jonathan Cape, reprinted by permission of the Random House Group Limited.

‘The Eldest Child’ is from The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin by Maeve Brennan, reprinted by the permission of Russell & Volkening as agents for the author. Copyright © 1997 by the Estate of Maeve Brennan.

‘In the Middle of the Fields’ is from The Stories of Mary Lavin: Volume III by Mary Lavin and is reprinted by the permission of the Estate of Mary Lavin. Copyright © 1985 by the Estate of Mary Lavin.

The authors have asserted their moral rights.

PRINT ISBN: 978-1-84840-420-5

EPUB ISBN: 978-1-84840-421-2

MOBI ISBN: 978-1-84840-422-9

All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.

British Library Cataloguing Data.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Contents

Editor’s Introduction

Acknowledgements

The Purple Jar                                                      Maria Edgeworth

Frank’s Resolve                                        Charlotte Riddell

Poisson d’Avril                                        Somerville and Ross

In the Middle of the Fields                         Mary Lavin

Winter Journey (The Apparitions)                Anne Devlin

The Meaning of Missing                           Evelyn Conlon

The Coast of Wales                                 Éilís Ní Dhuibhne

The Crossing                                        Lia Mills

The Cat and the Mouse                          Christine Dwyer Hickey

Three Stories About Love                        Anne Enright

As Seen From Space                              Susan Stairs

My Little Pyromaniac                            Mary Costello

Frogs                                                Molly McCloskey

A Fuss                                              Bernie McGill

SOMAT                                           June Caldwell

Shut Your Mouth, Hélène                     Nuala Ní Chonchúir

I’ll Take You There                              Niamh Boyce

Beneath the Taps: A Testimonial             Anakana Schofield

Somewhere To Be                               Siobhán Mannion

Through the Wall                               Eimear McBride

Multitudes                                      Lucy Caldwell

Berghain                                        Lisa McInerney

Infinite Landscapes                           Roisín O’Donnell

Gustavo                                       E. M. Reapy

Lane In Stay                                 Eimear Ryan

Editor’s Introduction

In 2001, I discovered a copy of Cutting the Night in Two: Short Stories by Irish Women Writers. Edited by Evelyn Conlon and Hans-Christian Oeser, it is a sizeable anthology of thirty- four writers, living and dead. I hadn’t encountered many all-female anthologies (of Irish writers), so I was intrigued. In my first years of discovering books, I was frequently drawn to the short story. Here was a form whose brevity belied the scale of thoughts and ideas within it. Anthologies are something of a gift for a curious reader: a chance to sit down in the company of several writers within one volume.

Until Cutting the Night in Two, nearly every anthology I opened – and I include books from all around the world – was heavily weighted towards male writers. Irish offerings were no different: pick up any anthology of Irish short stories published between 1950 and 1990, and there was a certain amount of predictability when it came to who was included. Scanning down the list of contributors, a reader would usually find that there were rarely more than five stories by women. Many anthologies had none, others had just two female writers, and it was always the ubiquitous names, the female stalwarts of the form like Mary Lavin, Edna O’Brien, Somerville and Ross, and Elizabeth Bowen. (Although one notable exception is Modern Irish Stories, edited by Caroline Walsh and published by The Irish Times in 1985. Of the thirty writers, sixteen are women.)

It’s only in the last three decades that we’ve seen a small number of collections focused solely on Irish women’s writing, including Janet Madden-Simpson’s A Woman’s Part: An Anthology of Short Fiction By and About Irish Women 1890–1960, The Female Line: Northern Irish Women’s Writers edited by Ruth Hooley, Virgins and Hyacinths edited by Caroline Walsh, Ailbhe Smyth’s Wildish Things: An Anthology of New Irish Women’s Writing and Territories of the Voice: Contemporary Short Stories by Irish Women Writers edited by Louise DeSalvo, Kathleen Walsh D’Arcy and Katherine Hogan. Personal taste and bias sways the choices made by any anthology editor, but in the past, selecting a comparable number of women to feature alongside their male contemporaries often wasn’t done, whatever the impetus for that was. The anthologies I mention prove that there wasn’t a shortage of female writers, but collections published before 1980 simply didn’t include them in large numbers. Visibility was once an issue, and in the last five years, regardless of gender, Irish writing has flourished and expanded. These writers are finding readers, winning prizes and creating a new collective: 2015 already feels like a very strong year for emerging Irish female voices, some of whom feature in this book. There is a palpable energy in Irish writing, and although many writers feel the pragmatic pull towards the novel, most are still enthusiastically committed to the shorter form.

Putting together an anthology can be construed as creating a canon, but many factors went into the selection of these stories. In choosing deceased writers, I tried to find stories that I both admired, and that hadn’t already been heavily anthologised. With the exception of ‘The Demon Lover’ by Elizabeth Bowen, most of these stories do not regularly, if ever, appear in anthologies. For a long time Maeve Brennan’s short stories were out of print, and ‘The Eldest Child’ originally appeared in 1969’s In and Out of Never Never Land. It wasn’t until a new collection, The Springs of Affection was reissued by Counterpoint Press in the late 1990s, that the story was republished. It’s even more difficult to locate the short stories of Norah Hoult – who appeared in Cutting the Night in Two – but London’s Persephone Books have kept her novel There Were No Windows in print. The story that appears here, ‘Miss Coles Makes the Tea’, appears in Hoult’s 1950 collection Cocktail Bar, which is out of print. Maria Edgeworth is better known for writing on social issues, and her novels, but she also wrote short stories. On the surface, ‘The Purple Jar’ is a cautionary tale of being careful what you wish for, or possibly the evils of capitalism, but one interpretation pitches it as a metaphor for menstruation.

I wanted this book to look back, as well as forward: to trace a line to the past when women publishing their writing was rare, and often discouraged. ‘Frank’s Response’ comes from Charlotte Riddell’s collection Frank Sinclair’s Wife: And Other Stories, but even though Riddell was a prolific writer, she wrote under the androgynous pseudonym of F. G. Trafford until her eighth book was published. Before the start of the twentieth century, writing was often only accessible to those of a certain class. The formidable duo of Somerville and Ross wrote from a different, ascendency position, and the story here, ‘Poisson d’Avril’, offers both historical context of a bygone era, as well as much comedy. One of the best-known stories in this collection is Elizabeth Bowen’s ‘The Demon Lover’. Is it a ghost story or an account of psychological breakdown? It also references both World Wars and the long-lasting effect each had on individuals and on the physical make-up of a city.

Much of the early work included here shows women straining against the gendered roles of the time. The young widow in Mary Lavin’s ‘In the Middle of the Fields’ tries to run the family farm while staving off grief and unwanted male attention. In Maeve Brennan’s ‘The Eldest Child’, Mrs Bagot, the bereaved mother of a newborn, battles grief and is instructed to be stoic and move on.

In some ways this book is a triptych: deceased classic writers sit alongside the feted names of the last two decades and the next generation of new voices. This is why the stories are published chronologically. As the title suggests, the book is rooted in the present with emerging writers, and looks all the way back to the flag bearers of Irish women’s writing. And it’s a long arc: there are 218 years between the oldest and youngest writer in the collection (Maria Edgeworth and Eimear Ryan, respectively).

The writers were not given a theme or any guidance as to what they could, or should, write about. As with any anthology, the diversity and range of issues raised is very broad. Certainly, there are examinations of inner lives and of things that only affect women – pregnancy, miscarriage, sisterhood – but within these stories there are universal truths. In Lucy Caldwell’s ‘Multitudes’, a new mother watches as her baby struggles to survive, while Eimear McBride’s reluctant mother in ‘Through the Wall’ handles maternity very differently. Siobhan Mannion’s character in ‘Somewhere to Be’ has a jarring experience in the sea, which recalls another recent trauma. In the second of Anne Enright’s ‘Three Stories about Love’, homesickness haunts a pregnant Irish woman living in Australia. ‘You’re not far away until you have a baby, and then you’re really, really far away,’ she says.

Leave-taking and distance is often a feature of Irish writing, from leaving behind a small town, in Lisa McInerney’s ‘Berghain’, or an entire country, in Belinda McKeon’s ‘Long Distance’ – although Evelyn Conlon’s ‘The Meaning of Missing’ focuses on those who are left behind when others emigrate. There’s the strange outsiderness of the woman obsessed with baths and plumbing in Anakana Schofield’s ‘Beneath the Taps’, and along with June Caldwell’s ‘SOMAT’, it’s one of the most experimental stories in the book in terms of language and form.

Several stories deal with lost potential, missed opportunities and what happens when other people impose their expectations on us. Hélène, the young American frontier girl in Nuala Ní Chonchúir’s story, wonders why she isn’t encouraged to go to school. Niamh Boyce’s protagonist is a grown woman, a wife, a neighbour, and yet her choices are thwarted. Many stories deal with the complexity of family relationships, including the mother and son trying to navigate a new life in ‘As Seen From Space’ by Susan Stairs.

There is as much overlap as there are distinct ideas among the thirty stories. Defiance and aspiration are motivators: in Norah Hoult’s story, Olive is determined not to let her deafness hold her back, while the mystery behind a young girl’s blindness in ‘The Cat and the Mouse’ by Christine Dwyer Hickey is finally revealed.

The writers are all Irish, or based here, but not all the stories take place in Ireland. Molly McCloskey draws on her US background and sets ‘Frogs’ in Portland for a reunion that offers promise only to turn into something else. Kate O’Brien lived away from Ireland for much of her life, and wrote many travel pieces. In ‘A Bus from Tivoli’, an Irishwoman abroad in Italy seeks solace and independence, only to find herself receiving unwanted attention. The heat and claustrophobia of ‘The Crossing’ by Lia Mills also echoes the crumbling marriage in the story.

There are mothers and daughters, pregnant women, and childless ones, young girls on the cusp of life and women at the end of it. In ‘The Coast of Wales’, a widow finds comfort in the routine and memory, while Eimear Ryan’s character in ‘Lane in Stay’ reinvents herself dramatically after her husband dies.

There are ghosts in these pages, some actual, some metaphysical, and many are generated by the fact that we all have a past, receding further and further in the rear- view mirror. In ‘My Little Pyromaniac’ by Mary Costello, sometimes the thing you want to escape most is literally on your doorstep. An ex-boyfriend makes a current one feel uneasy in E. M. Reapy’s ‘Gustavo’. The woman in Anne Devlin’s ‘Winter Journey (The Apparitions)’ has travelled all over Europe, but still is troubled by her youth. For another Northern Irish writer, Bernie McGill, a death in the present reawakens an unwanted scene from the past.

I hope that The Long Gaze Back finds new readers for the older writers included here, and that the new and existing voices reinforce the breadth and brilliance of Irish women’s writing. The book’s title is a quote from Maeve Brennan’s novella, The Visitor, and I hope captures the sense of looking back over the long arc of Irish women’s writing. Mary Lavin said there was a ‘large deal of detection in the short story’, and all of these stories are about figuring things out, exploration and questioning ourselves and all around us – something that fiction can encourage each of us to do.

Sinéad Gleeson,

Dublin,

Summer 2015

Acknowledgements

I’m indebted to Eoin Purcell, former commissioning editor at New Island, for agreeing to this idea after a random comment from me. Edwin Higel and Daniel Bolger have been very supportive of the project, and helped to get it over the finish line. Thanks to Mariel, Justin and all at New Island for their support of the book and for championing it. A special thank you to Hannah Shorten, who worked tirelessly to help locate stories and chase copyright clearance.

Many people offered advice on specific writers, works and anthologies, including Professor Margaret Kelleher, Evelyn Conlon, Cormac Kinsella, Rosita Boland and particularly Dr Eibhear Walsh.

Huge thanks to Martin Gleeson for all his work on the cover design and illustration.

Finally, thank you to the writers whose wonderful work makes up this collection.

Maria Edgeworth

Maria Edgeworth was born in Oxfordshire in 1768 but moved with her family to Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford when she was five. There, she wrote novels, short stories, children’s literature and essays on politics and social issues. During the Famine, she worked to help the starving, and wrote Orlandino – a children’s story – to benefit the Poor Relief Fund. She is best known for her novels, Castle Rackrent (1800), which garnered praise from Sir Walter Scott) as well as Belinda (1801) and The Absentee (1812). Edgeworth died in 1849 aged eighty-one.

The Purple Jar

Rosamond, a little girl of about seven years old, was walking with her mother in the streets of London. As she passed along, she looked in at the windows of several shops, and she saw a great variety of different sorts of things, of which she did not know the use, or even the names. She wished to stop to look at them; but there was a great number of people in the streets, and a great many carts and carriages and wheelbarrows, and she was afraid to let go her mother’s hand.

‘Oh! Mother, how happy I should be,’ said she, as she passed a toyshop, ‘if I had all these pretty things!’

‘What, all! Do you wish for them all, Rosamond?’

‘Yes, Mamma, all.’

As she spoke, they came to a milliner’s shop; the windows were hung with ribbons and lace, and festoons of artificial flowers.

‘Oh! Mamma, what beautiful roses! Won’t you buy some of them?’

‘No, my dear.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t want them, my dear.’

They went a little farther, and they came to another shop, which caught Rosamond’s eye. It was a jeweler’s shop; and there were a great many pretty baubles, ranged in drawers behind glass.

‘Mamma, you’ll buy some of these?’

‘Which of them, Rosamond?’

‘Which? I don’t know which; but any of them, for they are all pretty.’

‘Yes, they are all pretty; but of what use would they be to me?’

‘Use! Oh, I’m sure you could find some use or other, if you would only buy them first.’

‘But I would rather find out the use first.’

Rosamond was very sorry that her mother wanted nothing. Presently, however, they came to a shop, which appeared to her far more beautiful than the rest. It was a chemist’s shop; but she did not know that.

‘Oh, Mother! Oh!’ cried she, pulling her mother’s hand. ‘Look! Look! Blue, green, red, yellow, and purple! Oh, Mamma, what beautiful things! Won’t you buy some of these?’

Still her mother answered as before, ‘What use would they be to me, Rosamond?’

‘You might put flowers in them, Mamma, and they would look so pretty on the chimneypiece. I wish I had one of them.’

‘You have a flower vase,’ said her mother; ‘and that is not for flowers.’

‘But I could use it for a flower vase, Mamma, you know.’

‘Perhaps if you were to see it nearer, if you were to examine it, you might be disappointed.’

‘No, indeed; I’m sure I should not. I should like it exceedingly.’

Rosamond kept her head turned to look at the purple vase till she could see it no longer.

‘Then, Mother,’ said she, after a pause, ‘perhaps you have no money.’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘Dear me! If I had money, I would buy roses, and boxes, and purple flowerpots, and everything.’ Rosamond was obliged to pause in the midst of her speech.

‘Oh, Mamma, would you stop a minute for me? I have got a stone in my shoe; it hurts me very much.’

‘How comes there to be a stone in your shoe?’

‘Because of this great hole, Mamma – it comes in there: my shoes are quite worn out; I wish you’d be so very good as to give me another pair.’

‘Nay, Rosamond, but I have not money enough to buy shoes, and flowerpots, and boxes, and everything.’

Rosamond thought that was a great pity. But now her foot, which had been hurt by the stone, began to give her so much pain that she was obliged to hop every other step, and she could think of nothing else. They came to a shoemaker’s shop soon afterwards.

‘There! There! Mamma, there are shoes – there are little shoes that would just fit me; and you know shoes would be really of use to me.’

‘Yes, so they would, Rosamond. Come in.’

She followed her mother into the shop. Mr Sole, the shoemaker, had a great many customers, and his shop was full, so they were obliged to wait.

‘Well, Rosamond,’ said her mother, ‘you don’t think this shop so pretty as the rest?’

‘No, not nearly; it’s black and dark, and there are nothing but shoes all round; and besides, there’s a very disagreeable smell.’

‘That smell is the smell of new leather.’

‘Is it? Oh!’ said Rosamond, looking round, ‘there is a pair of little shoes; they’ll just fit me, I’m sure.’

‘Perhaps they might, but you cannot be sure till you have tried them on, any more than you can be quite sure that you should like the purple vase exceedingly, till you have examined it more attentively.’

‘Why, I don’t know about the shoes, certainly, till I’ve tried; but, mamma, I’m quite sure I should like the flowerpot.’

‘Well, which would you rather have, that jar, or a pair of shoes? I will buy either for you.’

‘Dear Mamma, thank you – but if you could buy both?’

‘No, not both.’

‘Then the jar, if you please.’

‘But I should tell you that I shall not give you another pair of shoes this month.’

‘This month! That’s a very long time indeed. You can’t think how these hurt me. I believe I’d better have the new shoes –but yet, that purple flowerpot – Oh, indeed, Mamma, these shoes are not so very, very bad; I think I might wear them a little longer; and the month will soon be over: I can make them last to the end of the month, can’t I? Don’t you think so, Mamma?’

‘Nay, my dear, I want you to think for yourself: you will have time enough to consider about it whilst I speak to Mr Sole about my boots.’

Mr Sole was by this time at leisure; and whilst her mother was speaking to him, Rosamond stood in profound meditation, with one shoe on, and the other in her hand.

‘Well, my dear, have you decided?’

‘Mamma! – Yes – I believe. If you please – I should like the flowerpot; that is, if you won’t think me very silly, Mamma.’

‘Why, as to that, I can’t promise you, Rosamond; but when you are to judge for yourself, you should choose what will make you the happiest; and then it would not signify who thought you silly.’

‘Then, Mamma, if that’s all, I’m sure the flowerpot would make me the happiest,’ said she, putting on her old shoe again; ‘so I choose the flowerpot.’

‘Very well, you shall have it: clasp your shoe and come home.’

Rosamond clasped her shoe, and ran after her mother: it was not long before the shoe came down at the heel, and many times was she obliged to stop, to take the stones out of her shoe, and often was she obliged to hop with pain; but still the thoughts of the purple flowerpot prevailed, and she persisted in her choice.

When they came to the shop with the large window, Rosamond felt her joy redouble, upon hearing her mother desire the servant, who was with them, to buy the purple jar, and bring it home. He had other commissions, so he did not return with them. Rosamond, as soon as she got in, ran to gather all her own flowers, which she had in a corner of her mother’s garden.

‘I’m afraid they’ll be dead before the flowerpot comes, Rosamond,’ said her mother to her, when she was coming in with the flowers in her lap.

‘No, indeed, Mamma, it will come home very soon, I dare say; and shan’t I be very happy putting them into the purple flowerpot?’

‘I hope so, my dear.’

The servant was much longer returning home than Rosamond had expected; but at length he came, and brought with him the long wished-for jar. The moment it was set down upon the table, Rosamond ran up with an exclamation of joy.

‘I may have it now, Mamma?’

‘Yes, my dear, it is yours.’

Rosamond poured the flowers from her lap upon the carpet, and seized the purple flowerpot. ‘Oh, dear Mother!’ cried she, as soon as she had taken off the top, ‘but there’s something dark in it – it smells very disagreeable: what is in it? I didn’t want this black stuff.’

‘Nor I neither, my dear.’

‘But what shall I do with it, Mamma?’

‘That I cannot tell.’

‘But it will be of no use to me, Mamma.’

‘That I can’t help.’

‘But I must pour it out, and fill the flowerpot with water.’

‘That’s as you please, my dear.’

‘Will you lend me a bowl to pour it into, Mamma?’

‘That was more than I promised you, my dear; but I will lend you a bowl.’

The bowl was produced, and Rosamond proceeded to empty the purple vase. But to her surprise and disappointment, when it was entirely empty, she found that it was no longer a purple vase! It was a plain white glass jar, which had appeared to have that beautiful colour merely from the liquor with which it had been filled.

Little Rosamond burst into tears.

‘Why should you cry, my dear?’ said her mother; ‘it will be of as much use to you now as ever for a flower vase.’

‘But it won’t look so pretty on the chimneypiece. I am sure, if I had known that it was not really purple, I should not have wished to have it so much.’

‘But didn’t I tell you that you had not examined it, and that perhaps you would be disappointed?’

‘And so