Matters of Life and Death

A new book of stories from Bernard MacLaverty is a cause for celebration, but "Matters of Life and Death" is more than that, as it is - without question - the finest collection yet from a contemporary master of the form. Beginning with the sudden, nauseating terror of a family caught up in an explosion of shocking sectarian violence and ending with the white-out of an Iowa blizzard and a different kind of fear: the fear of displacement, erasure, of losing your way - and yourself - very far from home, "Matters of Life and Death" is a book about bonds and connections, made and broken, secret and known. In the extraordinary long story, "Up the Coast", a landscape painter discovers a place that makes her feel whole, finally, only to have that communion cruelly shattered by an arbitrary act of aggression - an act that will resonate through her work and her life from that moment on. Vivid, beautifully controlled and written with effortless skill and empathy, these stories are object lessons in the art of short fiction: the author's perfect eye and ear attending to every detail, every nuance of idiom and character, to remake the world for us, here on the page.

ISBN 0224077856   Pages 240 ISBN13 9780224077859 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 266 Publisher Vintage   Published in London Imprint Jonathan Cape Ltd   Height (mm) 223 Format Hardback   Width (mm) 143 Publication date 11 May 2006   Spine width (mm) 22 DEWEY 823.914   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC22

		On the roundabout		1
		The Trojan sofa		5
		Matters of life & death 1 : learning to dance		25
		The clinic		49
		A trusted neighbour		63
		A Belfast memory		89
		The wedding ring		101
		The assessment		123
		Up the coast		141
		Matters of life & death 2 : visiting Takabuti		197
		Winter storm		213

"These are stories in the easiest and most pleasurable sense of the word. MacLaverty's work is in a line from Chekhov, via Frank O'Connor."-"Guardian" "A masterly control of pace and structure, pitch-perfect capturing of voice, characterization that has spot-on credibility."-"Sunday Times" "This stupendous new book . . . crucial, shattering sentences that express modestly, monumentally the achievement of this extraordinary writer. He is behind your eyes before you feel his thinking knife."-"Scottish Review of Books"

"From the Trade Paperback edition."

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