Collected Stories (Paperback)

~ (Author) "AT DUSK the big Englishman Belcher would shift his long legs out of the ashes and ask, "Well, chums, what about it?" and Noble or..." (more)
Key Phrases: old parish priest, worried air, mournful smile, Father Fogarty, Brother Michael, Brother Arnold (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"One of the masters of the short story." -- Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek

"In his 63 years, Frank O'Connor produced an impressive amount of work...but it's his short stories that guarantee his immortality. They are encapsulated universes. While most modern stories focus on a single moment, Frank O'Connor's generally sum up the patterns of whole lives ....Each [story] is, in its own way, shattering." -- Anne Tyler, Chicago Sunday Times

"Walter Benjamin says in his essay on Leskov that people think of a storyteller as someone who has come from afar. O'Connor's best stories put the same thought into our heads; how far, in some imaginative sense, he has to travel to achieve such wisdom and to accomplish it with such Flair." -- Denis Donoghue, New York Times Book Review

"In almost all the stories in this excellently balanced collection O'Connor's people explode from the page. The nice are here and the nasty: the gentle, the generous, the mean, the absurd, those rich in dignity, those without a shred of it....Without adornment, he simply tells the truth." -- William Trevor, Washington Post Book World

"The life work of an artist whose stature is comparable to that of W.B. Yeats and James Joyce, an artist who, in the words of Yeats himself, did for Ireland what Chekhov did for Russia." -- Robert Leiter, Philadelphia Inquirer -- Review

Review

"One of the masters of the short story." -- Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek

"In his 63 years, Frank O'Connor produced an impressive amount of work...but it's his short stories that guarantee his immortality. They are encapsulated universes. While most modern stories focus on a single moment, Frank O'Connor's generally sum up the patterns of whole lives ....Each [story] is, in its own way, shattering." -- Anne Tyler, Chicago Sunday Times

"Walter Benjamin says in his essay on Leskov that people think of a storyteller as someone who has come from afar. O'Connor's best stories put the same thought into our heads; how far, in some imaginative sense, he has to travel to achieve such wisdom and to accomplish it with such Flair." -- Denis Donoghue, New York Times Book Review

"In almost all the stories in this excellently balanced collection O'Connor's people explode from the page. The nice are here and the nasty: the gentle, the generous, the mean, the absurd, those rich in dignity, those without a shred of it....Without adornment, he simply tells the truth." -- William Trevor, Washington Post Book World

"The life work of an artist whose stature is comparable to that of W.B. Yeats and James Joyce, an artist who, in the words of Yeats himself, did for Ireland what Chekhov did for Russia." -- Robert Leiter, Philadelphia Inquirer

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 720 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Books Ed edition (August 12, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394710487
• ISBN-13: 978-0394710488
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #232,000 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ireland's Premier Short Story Teller, July 6, 1999

By A Customer

The tradition of the Irish story teller has been reborn in this century in her marvelous short story writers. None was finer than Corkman, Frank O'Connor. All of O'Connor's classic stories are here. O'Connor truly captures Irish life in the early part of this century. The wit and humor that are legendary among Corkmen is present throughout this book. This is one of my favorite books ever. I have given it as a gift too many times to count. Every person that I gave it to came back raving about it!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best short-story teller of his generation, July 28, 1998

By A Customer

Frank O'Connor is likely our time's and our language's best at telling the short story. Don't miss "First Confession" or "The Drunkard."

You don't have to be Irish to recognize the pattern and rhythm of life and speech in his stories. They capture a place and time perfectly, but yet transcend the confinements of culture or period.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a great storyteller, July 10, 2003

By	L. Stearns Newburg "LSN" (CA USA) - See all my reviews

Generally, when it comes to literature, I'm fairly hard to please. That being said, I love this book without reservation. I've recommended it to and foisted it on friends for years now. Many of them react much the way I do: there isn't anyone else like Frank O'Connor.

The stories are lyrical, sharply and humorously observed, and told with elegance in an easy but precise idiomatic diction. O'Connor always gave his work the test of being read aloud, and this care for the sound and cadence of his prose shows on every page.

Then, there is O'Connor's feeling for people. Reading the stories, one gets the impression that he was an intelligent but fundamentally kindly, generous man. Even when a character in the stories does something that seems objectionable, O'Connor never loses sight of that character's humanity. There is no absence of modernist irony, and the irony can sting (as in "The Mad Lomasneys"), but it is never cruel.

O'Connor's stories take place in Ireland, but they are not circumscribed by a desire to depict Irish regional color or romantic notions about the place. He wrote what he knew and understood, and what he understood was the people he grew up with. If that makes him a regionalist, then so were Faulkner and John Millington Synge. In his own subtle way, O'Connor was a realist, and ultimately, these stories are universal: they touch places in the psyche and the human heart that are common to us all.

Any selection of one's "favorite" stories will be personal. To an interested reader, I would say, "Read them all." To friends who ask, I add that they should start with "Guests of the Nation" and "First Confession." These aren't his "best" stories, but I've always liked them both, they are typical of his best, and one must start somewhere.

When I've given 5 stars to a book, I've often had to argue with myself as to whether it deserved it. Not for this one.