One great short story to read today: Kevin Barry’s “Fjord of Killary”
According to the powers that be (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, for the third year in a row, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, free* to read online, every (work) day of the month. Why not read along with us? Today, we recommend:
Kevin Barry, “Fjord of Killary”
It’s not for me to say what the best Irish short story of this still young century is (though that’s an author poll I’d be keen to see the results of), but Kevin Barry’s “Fjord of Killary,” first published in the New Yorker in 2010, is unquestionably a contender for the most fun. Nobody does lyrically profane dialogue or lovelorn Irish grotesques quite like Barry, and this antic, ribald, faintly apocalyptic tale of a maudlin Irish hotelier and his rogue’s gallery of uninhibited bar patrons talking at one another as the storm waters rise outside, is the Barry at his sparkling best.
The story begins:
So I bought an old hotel on the fjord of Killary. It was set hard by the harbor wall, with Mweelrea Mountain across the water, and disgracefully gray skies above. It rained two hundred and eighty-seven days of the year, and the locals were given to magnificent mood swings. On the night in question, the rain was particularly violent—it came down like handfuls of nails flung hard and fast by a seriously riled sky god. I was at this point eight months in the place and about convinced that it would be the death of me.
“It’s end-of-the-fucking-world stuff out there,” I said.
The chorus of locals in the hotel’s lounge bar, as always, ignored me. I was a fretful blow-in, by their mark, and simply not cut out for tough, gnarly, West of Ireland living. They were listening, instead, to John Murphy, our alcoholic funeral director.
“I’ll bury anythin’ that fuckin’ moves,” he said.
*If you hit a paywall, we recommend trying with a different/private/incognito browser (but listen, you didn’t hear it from us).
