The Rings: a short story

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The Rings: a short story

 

Set in rural North Leitrim in the 1980’s, a removal ceremony marks the passing not only of a matriarch, but of a way of life where the old order is forever changed.

“In the hospital in Sligo Town, the undertaker’s assistant was bathing Bridget Ellen while her children were flying or sailing across the Irish Sea from scattered points throughout England. In trains and cars, others were nearer, Ignatius, the youngest of all of them, even had time for a drink.”

From the collection ‘Of Love and Other Miracles” First published in The Willesden Herald Short Stories of the Year. February 2023.

The Rings by Marion Urch McNulty.  (PDF Download.) 

 

 

The Secret Museum

The Secret Museum

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Picture the scene. A remote abandoned house, the inhabitants long gone, the contents covered in a fine layer of dust. In a curtained backroom, neatly laid out on a long, narrow table are a number of shabby, un-presupposing old wooden boxes. Hidden inside are revelations, objects of wonder and contemplation—elements of the natural world, a… more →

‘Sectioned. A Life Interrupted.’ John O’Donoghue.

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This is what you might call a classic survival memoir. It is about how easily individuals can fall through the gaps and lose themselves, but most of all it is about how people survive against the odds—in this instance, with the sustaining power of poetry and perhaps ultimately, love. ‘Sectioned’ is an understated memoir leavened with… more →

Reviewing ‘Violent Shadows’

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Reviews are funny things: as any writer will tell you, any reviews are better than none. Writing a novel about the Troubles in 1996, two years before the Good Friday Agreement was bound to be contentious. The publishers were so pessimistic they weren’t expecting any coverage at all. The hoped for endorsement didn’t come through:… more →

On Writing ‘Violent Shadows’.

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I have been preparing the new kindle edition of my first novel and thinking about violence. Set in the 1981, the year of the Hunger Strikes (a transitional year in terms of the Troubles), Violent Shadows looks at how and why somebody (a young woman), might get involved in political violence. As it turns out,… more →

Lola Montez in Islington. 1841

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Before her glorious reincarnation, Eliza Gilbert lived quietly in Islington for three months. She had left an abusive marriage in India and a grand romance had ended. Twenty years old, with only a small temporary allowance from her husband to live on, she moved to a humble cottage in Hornsey Road. Her naive dreams of… more →

Book Review: Playthings by Alex Pheby

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Paul Shreber is a recently retired High Court judge, a respectable member of fin de siècle Dresden society, the very embodiment of his age and class and time. One quiet day, his orderly life is thrown out of kilter. Small, inconsequential details become ominous: an unexpected, and emotionally charged, incident is stripped of all meaning.… more →

Hallelujah

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I am sitting downstairs on the 73 bus squeezed into the window seat by a big black girl with lots of shopping. She really is big. I really am squeezed in. It is 2008 and she is listening to Hallelujah on her MP3 player. Hallelujah is a song written by Leonard Cohen. It is also… more →