Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience

A beautiful short story collection by one of the masters of the genre. Bernard MacLaverty possesses this acute sense of details, this attention to every nod, every gesture and every word that can convey worlds in just a few pages. I particularly enjoyed the stories set during significant episodes of Irish history, their intimate settings expressing their effects on people's daily lives more powerfully than whole history books could.

I loved MacLaverty's previous novel Midwinter Break - the setting, the characters and observations of a marriage felt absolutely spot on, and the book has really stayed with me. Whilst the writing was good here and the stories had some hints of what I loved about Midwinter Break, they felt slight and sadly left little impression on me only days after finishing the book.

Bernard MacLaverty's evocative and disarming dozen historical short stories are extraordinary in their depiction of the ordinariness of human life, with his profoundly moving, yet understated prose. He has a keenly observant eye for the details that makes his fiction come vividly alive, covering universal themes of love, loss, grief, loneliness, family, ageing, relationships (intimate and otherwise), war, the Troubles, art, and the power of music. He writes with sensitivity, tenderness and compassion, the exquisite simplicity of his prose made reading this short story collection an absolute joy.

The first and last stories are set in the early WW2 years, both featuring the miraculous, with the anguish and grief of a Belfast mother, Gracie, who has lost her son, his ship hit by the Germans, she is making her way to the cinema to see a newsreel that may just prove that a God exists and impoverished Derry man, Peter Conway is a sick man, his doctor is not expecting him to live, he is suffering from septicaemia, when help comes from unexpected quarters, the US military. We see the relationship of a son living in a different country from his mother, she is in a home, a grandfather in Scotland begins to panic as he searches for his 2 missing grandchildren. Lily, once the lover of the sculptor, carries out a commission from him of making a death mask of a recently dead man, the British army coming looking for the son of a mother at night, a visit that results in a cricket ball going missing, and a man addicted to the demon drink proves to be somewhat good samaritan for a neighbour whilst helping himself to her brandy.

One of my favourite stories resonates with our contemporary global realities of a pandemic, set in Vienna in 1918 where we see the ending of Edi, the pregnant wife of the painter, Egon Schiele, forced to watch as his wife is dying of the Spanish Flu. On a ferry, a quibbling married couple, Sean and Grace, persuade a young woman transporting a harp to give an unforgettable musical performance, whilst in another story a piano gets dismantled. These are a glorious set of short stories, imaginative, emotive, artful, subtly nuanced in the characters and scenarios portrayed. I think many readers will love MacLaverty's stories. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

4-5 stars

This is a varied collection of short stories from the very talented Irish author. They are beautifully written, the language is lush, lyrical and very visual. Some of the stories are wonderfully immersive and others a bit more enigmatic. They are principally about grief and dying, some dwell on the ageing process, with the sadness of a lost loved one or the care needed for an aged parent with dementia or the coupledom of many years together. Some are set in Northern Ireland where The Troubles feature centrally in the storytelling.

The first story set in Belfast of 1940 features the grief of Gracie O’Brien for her son Frank who she fears lost at sea following a torpedo attack. This is a wonderful story, there’s some lovely memories and imagery and Gracie receives a great kindness. This is one of my favourites because Frank comes alive in her mind and there are some apt Irish expressions which sum situations up perfectly. Another good one is set in Belfast in 1971, featuring Molly and her 83 year old mammy and some British soldiers. The tension the author creates you could dig out with an Apostle Spoon (features in the first story) and you feel everyone’s heightened state of nerves.

There’s a collection entitled ‘The Fairly Good Samaritan ‘ and there are some good ones here too, with a drunk who does a fairly good turn for Mrs Downstairs but the best is set in Vienna in 1918. The central characters are Egon and his pregnant wife Edith and centres around the devastating arrival of the Spanish flu. That one resonates for obvious reasons with the author bringing post-War Austria alive with the colour of the writing.

I also love the story of couple Sean and Gracie who amicably bicker on a ferry crossing from Ireland to Scotland. It becomes a magical voyage when they encounter Lisa with a harp. The final one set in Derry of 1942 and throws up some thought provoking comparisons of segregation following the arrival of US soldiers many of whom are black with the situation of Catholic/Protestant segregation. This one features a new wonder drug being produced by Pfizer.... which is clever and miraculous.

Overall, this is an intriguing, beautifully written, clever and thought provoking collection which is well worth reading.

With thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Vintage/Jonathan Cape for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

‘Midwinter Break’ is one of my favourite books of recent years so I was very excited to be able to read an early copy of Bernard MacLaverty’s latest work. This is a collection of short stories looking at instances of grief, loneliness, ageing and death, and those set in Ireland are by far the ones that struck me most. I remember from ‘Midwinter Break’ the sublime talent BM has for conveying moments of poignancy in unremarkable, everyday lives and some of these stories impressed me in the same way.

I am thinking here particularly of the first in the collection (in which a mother is reeling from the news that her son’s ship has gone down in the Atlantic convoys of WWII), the title story (about a lonely widower and a triumph of obliquely articulated compassion), and the final two.

The last one sees a doctor going out of his way to save the life of a man he barely knows and the author conveys with heartbreaking subtlety and understatement what an unusual act of kindness this is.

The penultimate story features a long-married couple on a ferry journey across the Irish Sea and is most reminiscent of ‘Midwinter Break’ with the bickering born out of familiarity.

A lovely, varied but oddly cohesive collection that I shall re-read for sure. Highly recommended.

There's lots to admire in this excellent collection of stories by Bernard MacLaverty. Most deal with the ageing process, sometimes from the perspective of the older person, sometimes narrated by a younger relative. There are some beautifully evocative pictures of Ireland during the war, as in the opening and closing stories, and a pleasing and surprising tendency towards happy(ish) endings. "Blank Pages" is very good on writing and loss and 'The Dust Gatherer" captures an unrecoverable past beautifully. Only "The End of Days", whose Vienna of 1918 lacks the vivid depiction common to the other stories' settings, disappoints. There's a purity to the writing which is compelling and where MacLaverty resembles the lost mother of "Wandering" whose "head was away ahead of her, making stories".