Banished Misfortune

This was the author's first short story collection and it reveals a brilliant talent. A lovestruck adolescent waiting hopelessly for the girl who never comes, a drifter on the fringes of down-and-out London, an embittered middle-aged journalist living alone, a young boy persuaded to curse a barmaid for the illusory promise of riding his temptor s race horses, a Northern Ireland family who have put the distance of a Galway holiday between themselves and the Troubles Dermot Healy s characters are often at odds with life, but he writes about them with a generous irony and a refreshingly unsentimental lyricism