Description: One of the great overlooked voices of modern Irish literature, once hailed as "magnificent" by The New York Times, Mary Lavin's fiction is now being revived for a new generation of readers in this definitive volume, selected and introduced by Colm Tóibín.
During her lifetime, Irish American writer Mary Lavin was a prominent literary figure. Throughout the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, her stories were frequently featured in The New Yorker, compared to the works of Chekhov, James, and Wharton, and celebrated in major publications, ranging from The New York Times to The Irish Times. Lavin won prestigious awards, such as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Katherine Mansfield Prize, and her influence extends to many of today's great fiction writers. Yet, despite her incredible success, Lavin's once acclaimed body of work has largely fallen out of print, lost and erased from the canon. Now, An Arrow in Flight brings together sixteen of Lavin's most powerful stories, selected and introduced by Colm Tóibín. In witty and sharp prose, these tales explore familial tensions, relationships between men and women, and the social mores and biases of 20th-century Irish society, from the streets of Dublin to the fields of County Meath. Essential for any fan of contemporary Irish literature, An Arrow in Flight shines a much-needed light on "a master of the genre" (Los Angeles Times) who has, for too long, remained in the shadows.Brief description: Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island, an Oprah's Book Club Pick; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; and Nora Webster, winner of the Hawthornden Prize, as well as three story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and was named the 2022-2024 Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. In 2021, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature.
Review Quotes: Praise for Mary Lavin
"She is, to come right out with it, magnificent."--The New York Times "A master of the genre."--The Los Angeles Times "A writer whose best ranks with the century's best."--The New York Times Book Review "A real storyteller."--The Atlantic "A serious and talented writer."--The New Yorker "An exponent of the art of the short story in its best form."--The Guardian "Comparisons have been made--and rightly--with both Turgenev and Chekhov; but it was of Edith Wharton that a rereading put me in mind-- in the delicacy of Miss Lavin's sensibilities, in the robustness of her plotting, and in her insight into loneliness and the cruelties which are perpetrated in the name of family love and respectability."--Daily Telegraph "One of modern Irish fiction's most subversive voices."--The Irish Times "I envy the skill of Mary Lavin [...] Her style is bare and direct, her dialogue artfully flat. But in her capacity to make much out of little, to compress an entire ethos into an apparently banal situation, she reminds us--far more than the erectors of post-Flaubertian pyramids--what literature is about."--Anthony Burgess "She fascinates me more than any other of the Irish writers of my generation."--Frank O'Connor "A writer of high distinction, who can search deep into the crazes and conflicts of ordinary life, and light it up so that we remember and ponder her vision of it."--Kate O'Brien "The short story of today owes [Lavin] a great deal."--William Trevor "One of the finest short story writers of the twentieth century."--Joyce Carol Oates "Lavin's stories restore my faith in human beings."--Kay Boyle