Aiden O Reilly
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Line by Neil Bourke

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A fascinating debut novel I had the pleasure to review for The Dublin Review of books.

Speculative novels from Ireland are as rare as hens’ teeth, despite the towering examples bequeathed to us by Jonathan Swift and Flann O’Brien. In more recent decades we have Mike McCormack’s fictions, and a YA novel by Sarah Maria Griffin. That’s about it as regards novels that meet Margaret Atwood’s tighter definition of speculative fiction as extrapolating the latent possibilities of current trends.

So I was immediately hooked when I heard of the premise of Bourke’s novel: a line of people queuing for generations, not sure what they are waiting for, but utterly convinced of the importance of keeping one’s place in the line. And ready to torture those who transgress.

The book twists between adventure and satire and existential questions – it’s Waiting for Godot crossed with Gulliver’s Travels. Seriously, that fits best.

Not surprising that it’s from Tramp Press. They brought out A Brilliant Void a couple of years ago – a collection of classic science fiction from Ireland. It’s like a window into a different era. There was a time when Ireland – or Dublin at least – was home to several sci-fi and horror writers: Dorothy McArdle, James Fitz-Maurice O’Brien, Jane Barlow, and many others.

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David Wheldon, writer and pathologist, passed away

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I was saddened to hear that the writer and pathologist David Wheldon passed away on January 7th this year. He had lived in Bedford for many years.

A note on his life and work is in The Bookseller.

I read David Wheldon’s novels The Viaduct and The Course of Instruction in a different era, when I was working on the building sites in London. They made a deep impression on me, and a few years ago I wrote an essay for The Stinging Fly about these early novels.

I exchanged emails with David over the course of a few years and am proud to be able to call him a friend. In our emails we chatted about his medical work, about my small son, and about his wife’s artistic work – his wife is the artist Sarah Longlands. And occasionally about our own work.

He kept writing and working right up to his sudden death at the age of seventy. Some recent stories of his have appeared in Confingo, Nightjar Press, and Woven Tale Press.

He had a website with samples of his poetry and short stories, and several essays, including some on his medical work. The link to that website doesn’t work now – I hope it goes back online soon.

I will have more to write about Wheldon’s work soon.

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The Heartsick Diaspora

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I’ve been looking forward to Elaine Chiew’s collection of short stories for a couple of years ever since I read a few in the Unthology anthology brought out by Unthank Press. Elaine is ethnic Chinese from Malaysia, educated in the USA and now lives in the UK. A very modern spread of identities.

Well at last it’s here and I pitched a review to Litro Magazine.

I was attracted to Chiew’s writing by its sheer brilliance and by how it captures the giddy sense of living in a world where everyone is guessing the rules. As I mention in the review, one takeaway point from the stories is that the clash between the older generation’s values and the newer is greater than east-west divide.

Easily the best collection I’ve read this year.

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Mentoring

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I have edited fiction and non-fiction for Mira Publishing UK for some years. I have taught courses in creative writing and been involved in many writing groups. I also proofread commercially in my day job.

I am on the Irish Writers Centre list of professional mentors.

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Writers’ Workbench at IWC

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A 6-week course workshop starting Thursday Feb 6th

Enhance your creative/critiquing skillset and knock your writing into shape.
This course takes a hands-on approach covering:
Creativity,
Dialogue & description
Finding your voice,
Style, Structure/plot,
Editing

Practicing editing techniques will be a crucial component and some of the mechanics of dialogue, description, and POV will be covered.  The course is suitable for those who have attempted some writing and for those in need of a new approach. Participants will be expected to complete two pieces of fiction or creative non-fiction.

At the Irish Writers Centre on Parnell Square

Bookings via the IWC website: https://irishwriterscentre.ie/collections/spring-2020/products/the-writers-workbench-with-aiden-oreilly-2020

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Irish Times classics revisited

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I see Rob Doyle has a regular column in the Irish Times where he introduces his best-loved books.

Doyle is the author of Here Are the Young Men and the short story collection this is the ritual – link is to to a few notes I made on it. His fictions generally zoom in on the anxieties, manias and apostates of these strange days we live in.

Here’s a list of the columns so far. There are a couple of my own favourites in there too.
And below is how he introduces the series

I read for delight and fascination, even when these demand a toll, opening old wounds or inflicting new ones. The books I’m going to recommend are eclectic. What they’ve got in common, aside from the fact that they were written prior to the 21st century, is that they have all made this human lifespan I find myself undergoing deeper, stranger, grander, and full of amazement.

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Selected Posts

  • Backstory of a book
    2019-02-22
  • Stinging Fly Wheldon essay
    2017-07-24
  • The Blocks by Karl Parkinson
    2016-10-02
  • London Trip
    2016-09-05
  • Honest Ulsterman interview
    2016-02-29
  • Greetings, Hero launch Hodges Figgis
    2014-11-21

Selected pages

  • Debut Book
  • Publications
  • Writers' Workbench at Block T

Crucial

  • . .
  • Asylum books
  • Buy the book at Kennys
  • Daniel Seery
  • David Mohan
  • Djelloul Marbrook
  • Gorse magazine
  • Slava Nesterov Artist
  • The Penny Dreadful
  • The road to publication
  • The Short Review
  • The Short Review
  • Unthology

Other links

  • . .
  • Karl Parkinson's The Blocks
  • Unthology 4 review
  • Wandering minstrel Larry Beau

What I'm up to

  • Buy the book at Kennys
  • Examiner review
  • Irish Times / Ashley Stokes
  • Irish Times Q+A Irish Times Q+A
  • The road to publication

Recent posts

  • Hangdog Souls by Marc Joan
  • Writers’ Workbench, Block T Dublin 8
  • New writing course at Crumlin College
  • Human Wishes / Enemy Combatant Human Wishes / Enemy Combatant
  • The Guiltless Bystander – short story collection from the late David Wheldon
  • GIGANTIC by Ashley Stokes GIGANTIC by Ashley Stokes

Quotation

The Tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction
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