Customer Reviews

The Portable Virgin

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Even though the author of this collection has almost the same name as my my mother, she's not related to me, at least not that I know of. I'd love if she was, because it's great to have a genius in the family, and she shows signs of being one with these beatifully weighted stories. There's a purity about them that sets them apart from the experimentalism and Ultra-naturalism that seem to dominate the form these days, a characteristically Irish love of language, and a simultaneous feeling for and detatchment from her characters that is really endearing. She reminds me more than anything else of Vermeer's portrait of a young girl, which seems to capture a fleeting moment that reveals so much about both the artist and their subject.

A Dublin bookshop offered this gem up to me when I was visiting Ireland in the early 90's, and probably a year has not gone by since 1991 when I haven't reread The Portable Virgin. It's smart, edgy, and hysterically funny. It's also an entirely original take on what contemporary Irish consciousness is like. Every friend to whom I've lent my dog-eared copy threatens to steal the book from me. Sadly, it's out of print, but an American publisher would be wise to print up another 50,000 copies.