The Irish Goodbye

What can we learn from an ordinary life observed with extraordinary skill? In The Irish Goodbye, Beth Ann Fennelly writes of the small moments that shape a life, in the process dignifying the diminutive through the act of attention. Fennelly explores her roles as a friend, wife, mother and daughter in precise sentences. The longer essays concern Fennelly’s relationships–with a beloved mother-in-law, a decades-long friendship between former college roommates, an artist who paints a series of nude portraits in Fennelly’s town. Interspersed between these longer memoirs are sections of flash non-fiction, a form Fennelly innovated. With dazzling verve and wit, they capture the interstitial interactions–encounters with strangers, quirky observations, unexpected flights of fancy–that make up a richly lived life. With emotional clarity and nimble prose, Fennelly invites readers to share her affirming worldview–one in which even our smallest interactions are rife with possibility. Beth Ann Fennelly’s Heating and Cooling was praised as: “A surprisingly maximalist portrait of a life.” — New York Times Book Review “The micro-memoirs showcase a range of emotions that belies their brevity—taken from another standpoint, their brevity is what gives them power.” — The Wall Street Journal