Old Romantics (ebook)

Description

LikeDubliners, ifDublinerswere Cat Person as a feminist mock-epic about a writers coming of ageand every Dubliner was named Margaret.A woman pursues a man who cut ahead of her in a line. Two nice people report that a child is being left unsupervised at a local beach. Romances, old and new, shift and sour. Following Maggie Armstrongs intrepid hero, Margaret, through first love, first bad date, first job, first extremely bad date, and on into midlife and its attendant disillusionmentand surprising revelationsOld Romanticsis an acutely observed and hideously entertaining collection of linked short stories from an astonishing new talent. Slippery, flawed, and acute, Armstrongs narrator navigates a world of awkward expectation and latent hostility with piercing insight into the trials and tribulations of attempting to be human while female.Praise forOld RomanticsAs for the prose, you could bathe in it. The details, the clever turns of phrase. A ticking clock is strict, censorious, like a clacking tongue. A heart bangs like a broken toy.Niamh Donnelly,Irish TimesThe collection builds to four final stories with power, insight and compassion for human frailty.Martina Devlin,Irish IndependentAn audacious debut.Irish TimesOld Romanticsis somehow both elegant and fiery. Maggie Armstrongs Dublin is full of surprises. An excellent debut.Nicole FlatteryExquisite and inventive prose conjures simmering menace along with sardonic comedy and razor-sharp self-awareness in this mesmerising collection.Sophie WhiteFunny and awkward and honest and perceptive and shrewd . . . a very exciting new voice in Irish fiction.Louise ONeill