Under the Rose Selected Stories

Julia O'Faolain's powerful short stories should be more widely read and more warmly appreciated. They offer the traditional pleasures of the genre in scene-setting and characterisation but are spiked with an eccentric humour that is particularly her own. Under the Rose demonstrates both [O'Faolain's] practised skill and her desire to disturb the complacent.

The shocks she contrives, embedded in casual narratives, are darkly funny and often grotesque ... In between are finely observed glimpses of daily life ... O'Faolain's long reach, technical confidence and vivid scenarios mark her out as an original writer who has built on the literary legacies of her father, Sean O'Faolain, and writers from Elizabeth Bowen to William Trevor, stiffening her tales with a characteristic mixture of feminism, politics and recent history. This collection will enable readers to enjoy a sampling of the riches of the work of this distinguished author. Lindsay Duguid Literary Review