An Arrow in Flight
Mary Lavin author Colm Tóibín editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Publishing:5th Mar '26
£18.99
This title is due to be published on 5th March, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Mary Lavin is the great unsung voice of Irish fiction. Here are her very best, most electric stories: illuminating, moving, arrows in flight.
SELECTED AND INTRODUCED BY COLM TÓIBÍN
Mary Lavin’s stories feature ordinary people in the tight confines of ordinary life. From rural Ireland and the streets of Dublin they charm, irritate and intrigue in complicated brilliance, appearing to us with unique freshness. Good friendships, bad deeds, frustrations, missteps, hope and laughter are all found in captivating stories where real and astonishing things happen.
Few women were so consistently published in the New Yorker and yet today Lavin’s work is largely unpublished and overlooked. This collection re-establishes her as one of the most genius, irresistible and memorable voices of the last century.
SELECTED AND INTRODUCED BY COLM TOÍBÍN
‘She is, to come right out with it, magnificent’ New York Times
‘Mary Lavin’s stories are a delight. They are delicate, but not too delicate to carry tragedy on one shoulder and comedy on the other’ Sunday Times
‘Lavin writes like a dream’ New York Times Book Review
Mary Lavin’s stories are patient, knowing, richly discriminating and wonderfully memorable. They're important work -- Richard Ford
She is, to come right out with it, magnificent * New York Times *
She reminds us…what literature is about -- Anthony Burgess
Mary Lavin’s stories are a delight. They are delicate, but not too delicate to carry tragedy on one shoulder and comedy on the other * Sunday Times *
She fascinates me more than any other of the Irish writers of my generation -- Frank O’Connor
Mary Lavin is keeping the stronghold of the Irish story in first-rate repair * Spectator *
Mary Lavin's prose has the simplicity and glow of time-polished wood * Sunday Times *
Caustic and also lyrical, she sees Ireland, even in its most obscure aspects, with a visionary penetration -- Seamus Deane
[Lavin] writes like a dream * New York Times Book Review *
These sombre and skilfully written stories describe the tragic dilemmas with which character and nature confront humans everywhere * Washington Post *
ISBN: 9781529956481
Dimensions: 222mm x 138mm x 40mm
Weight: 500g
304 pages