Berkeley’s Telephone, the first book of fiction by the poet Harry Clifton, is a darkly dazzling story-cycle concerned with arrivals and departures, identity and exile, sex and family and betrayal. Some of these stories are set in Africa, Asia or continental Europe, others in Ireland; they treat with equal conviction savannah villages and civil-service offices, businessmen and night-watchmen. They are all about human yearning and wandering. Together they have the cohesiveness and drama of a novel. The title story has been selected for Phoenix Irish Short Stories edited by David Marcus (July 2000).
This debut novel from Elske Rahill is darkly moving, often shocking, this interwoven story follows three college students, desperately searching for a place between the familiar and the strange as they careen towards self- knowledge.
Cassandra, volatile and scarred by loss, has been sculpted by the bohemian high life and then discarded. Oisín, a country boy pulsing with sexual aggression, is prone to equal flights of rage and compassion.
And you, Helen. Helen, who takes these two fractured lives and dashes them against herself, creating ripples that twist and distort their images of what should be.
In this stunning debut novel from Elske Rahill, each character forces the boundaries of normality, negotiating the chasms of their own violent sexuality and decay.