O’Connor’s wonderfully polyphonic tales of family, friendship, and rivalry are set beside those that bring to life forgotten souls on the fringes of society. O’Connor’s writings about Ireland vividly evoke the land he called home, while other stories probe the hardships and rewards of Irish emigration. Finally, we see O’Connor grappling, in both fiction and memoir, with the largest questions of religion and belief.The Best of Frank O’Connor is a literary monument to a truly great writer.

    I read and re-read, on and on until the darkness settled thick enough around me that I could no longer see the large-printed words on the gaudily illustrated pages, and then I clambered from the attic and threw myself into the story again while seated beside the fire. The wind carved elegiac plunder in the chimney and every banshee wail exploded awake a freshly forgotten colour in my mind. Children see the world in different lights, the brilliance of which is far too easily given up. This time, discovering them anew, I held fast and determined that I'd never again let go. With its stories of lost love and shared secrets, tender moments and little victories, In Too Deep is a wonderful follow-up to Billy's collection In Exile.

    Nearly all of his creative energy went into what was central for him: the great novels and stories that are now part of the canon of Irish and world literature.Yet he spoke out when he felt he had something worth saying and his non-fiction writings are of great interest to anyone who loves his work, and to all those interested in the recent history of Ireland. This book brings together all of McGahern's surviving essays, reviews and speeches. In them his canon of great writers - Tolstoy, Chekhov, James, Proust and Joyce - is cited many times, with deep and subtle appreciation. His discussions of Irish writers who influenced him are generous and brilliant - among them Michael McLaverty, Ernie O'Malley and Forrest Reid. His interventions on issues he felt strongly about - sectarianism, women's rights, the power of the church in Ireland - are lucid and far-sighted.