Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
To Avenge a Dead Glacier - cover

To Avenge a Dead Glacier

Shane Tivenan

Publisher: The Lilliput Press

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

Winner of the RTÉ Francis MacManus Short Story Prize and the John McGahern Award, Shane Tivenan is a remarkable new talent. This debut collection simmers with style, verve, tension and humour. Throughout the stories in To Avenge a Dead Glacier, Tivenan explores the lives of rural Irish outsiders. His characters are artists, sean-nós singers, members of the queer community, the gifted, the neurodivergent, the environmentally concerned, people with memory problems, the spiritual people, the non-human.
In the title story, a man attends the funeral of a glacier in Iceland without fully knowing why he is there. In another, a midlands graffiti artist warns his townspeople through his throw-ups about the dangers of the way they are living, but neglects his own mind in the process. In 'Honey Brown', a ninety-two-year-old woman who suffers from Charles Bonnet syndrome tries to celebrate her birthday in a nursing home in Roscommon while fighting back the hallucinations brought on by her condition. In 'Resurrection of a Corncrake', a semi-retired plasterer is haunted by the silencing of the birds in his townland, a silencing which he knows he took part in.
These are stories rich in the essential detail of human life, in the fraught exchanges that make up our every relationship, and very often of life lived beyond the confines of safety or simplicity.
Available since: 05/01/2025.
Print length: 178 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • When Night falls - Bunburry - A Cosy Mystery Series Episode 14 (Unabridged) - cover

    When Night falls - Bunburry - A...

    Helena Marchmont

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Miss Marple meets Oscar Wilde in this series of cosy mysteries set in the picturesque Cotswolds village of Bunburry.
    
    The picturesque Cotswolds village of Bunburry has been rocked by a series of burglaries, with dark suspicions over who is responsible. A discovery at the scene of the crime in the home of Bunburry's favourite senior citizens, Liz and Marge, leads amateur sleuth Alfie to fear the worst. He decides that this time, the matter should be left to the proper authorities. But with Constable Emma Hollis on sick leave, and Sergeant Harold Wilson as work-shy as ever, some of the villagers have other ideas...
    
    Nathaniel Parker, born in 1962, graduated from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and went on to join the Royal Shakespeare Company. His television career began in 1988 when he played Flying Officer 'Flash' Gordon in the LWT mini-series "Piece of Cake". He is also the lead in the BBC series "The Inspector Lynley Mysteries", based on the novels by Elizabeth George. Nathaniel Parker has an extensive list of audio books to his credit, ranging from the classics of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy to more modern writings and children's books.
    Show book
  • The Shout - cover

    The Shout

    Chris Snell

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    The sea is not a playground. A huge wave lifted the stern of the coaster, propeller and rudder, out of the froth and oil just as Bill Hawken tried to swing the Tamar Class lifeboat into a better position…Set in Cornwall, the crew never know what dangers, or even stranger outcomes, a call for a lifeboat launch will bring. The complexities of family life, interaction with hostile holiday-home owners, criminal activity, peer group tensions coupled with the day-to-day business of harbour life and other events, make for an exciting living.
    Show book
  • The Doll - The Lost Short Stories - cover

    The Doll - The Lost Short Stories

    Daphne Du Maurier

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0
    “Early stories [that] vividly portrays with humor, candidness, and detail du Maurier’s fascination with the problems of human connection.” —Publishers Weekly 
     
    Perhaps best known for her immortal gothic masterwork Rebecca—the basis for the Academy Award–winning motion picture directed by Alfred Hitchcock—Daphne de Maurier began her illustrious writing career penning short stories. In The Doll, thirteen of du Maurier’s early shorter fictional works have been collected—each story written before the author’s twenty-third birthday and some in print for the first time since the 1930s. Compelling tales of human foibles and tragic romance, the stories in The Doll represent the emergence of a remarkable literary talent who later went on to create Jamaica Inn, The Birds, and other classic works. This breathtaking collection of short fiction belongs on the bookshelf of every Daphne du Maurier fan. 
     
    “[D]electably florid.” —New York Times Book Review 
     
    “[Du Maurier’s] storytelling gifts are formidable.” —Kirkus Reviews
    Show book
  • In the Fourth Dimension - From their pens to your ears genius in every story - cover

    In the Fourth Dimension - From...

    Clothilde Graves

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Clotilde Augusta Inez Mary Graves was born on the 3rd June 1863 at Buttevant Castle, Co. Cork, to parents with military backgrounds. 
    At age nine, the family moved to Southsea in England for yet another military posting.  Her father’s postings gave her valuable experiences that would be put to good use in later years in some of her literary works. 
    She was educated at a Catholic convent in Lourdes before returning to London in 1884 to study art in Bloomsbury.  She worked part-time at the British Museum and the Royal Female School of Art and generated further income by drawing little pen-and-ink grotesques for the comic papers.  
    A few years later a chance meeting found her writing extra lyrics for a pantomime version of Puss in Boots.  She followed up with several financially successful plays, both in London and New York, and gained a measure of notoriety in one with the comparison of marriage and prostitution.   
    Despite her dramatic success she published her first novel in 1911 under the pseudonym of Richard Dehan which she continued to use for later works.  As well as novels and plays she published collections of short stories which glow with talent and invention. 
    She was an unusual figure in London society, wearing her hair short, taking on a masculine manner and cut of clothing, and smoking cigarettes in public when such traits were considered eccentric at best.  Add to this her admired collection of Chinese and Japanese trophies, her enthusiasm for fly-fishing and her riding of a tricycle and you have a perfect image of this fascinating writer. 
    Clotilde Graves died at the convent of Our Lady of Lourdes at Hatch End in Middlesex, on the 3rd December 1932.  She was 69.
    Show book
  • Fallen Tide - A Jesse McDermitt Novel - cover

    Fallen Tide - A Jesse McDermitt...

    Wayne Stinnett

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Coral branches rarely wear a wristwatch. That was Jesse McDermitt’s first thought when he found a partially denuded human arm, teeming with crab, lobster, and fish life, during his morning ocean swim. 
    The discovery of a drifting mega-yacht the following day while fishing the Gulf Stream, causes quite a stir among the many alphabet agencies of the federal government, not to mention one shaggy canine. 
    A severed leg and two whole bodies are discovered aboard. The find links the disappearance of the yacht’s owners to the arm Jesse found twenty miles to the north, near his home in the back country of the Florida Keys. 
    Black marketers from Eastern Europe have set up a base of operations too close to Jesse for comfort. The rescue of the yacht-owners takes on national security importance, but it’s even more important to one of Jesse’s closest friends. 
    High speed boats and planes race across the Gulf Stream, causing the Cuban Air Force to become nervous. Will Jesse and his crew reach the victims in time?
    Show book
  • Twenty-Six Men and a Girl - From their pens to your ears genius in every story - cover

    Twenty-Six Men and a Girl - From...

    Maxim Gorky

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Alexei Maximovich Peshkov was born on 28th March 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. 
    Better known as Maxim Gorky he was orphaned at 11 and ran away from home at 12.  At 19 he had already attempted suicide and thereafter travelled, by foot, across the Russian Empire for 5 years. 
    His first book ‘Essays & Stories’ in 1898 was a sensation and so began a long career as an author of short stories, novels and plays.  Gorky saw writing as a moral and political act that would help to change the unjust world around him.  He was an ardent early advocate of the emerging Marxist movement and publicly opposed the Tsarist regime leading several times to his arrest.  
    In 1904 he began his own theatre but the censor banned every play and Gorky was forced to abandon the project. 
    But Gorky was a financially successful author, editor, and playwright and gave monies to political parties as well as for civil rights and social reform.  The brutal shooting of workers, which set in motion the Revolution of 1905, pushed Gorky more decisively toward radical solutions.  
    In 1906 he went to the United States to raise funds for the Bolsheviks. Those experiences including a scandal over travelling with his lover and not his wife deepened his contempt for the ‘bourgeois soul.’ 
    Gorky now moved to Capri in Italy, both for health reasons and to escape the increasingly repressive times in Russia.  
    An amnesty for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty saw him return to Russia in 1914. His politics remained close to the Bolshevik cause.  But soon, after the 1918 revolution, his essays referred to Lenin as a tyrant for his senseless arrests and repression.  He was soon appealing to the outside world for food aid after the catastrophic crop failure. 
    In October 1921 Gorky returned to Italy, now in Fascist hands, and settled in Sorrento until 1932.  His health worsened with the onset of tuberculosis. 
    He wrote several successful books there but now decided to find an understanding with the communist regime. Stalin invited him home and his return was hailed as a major propaganda victory.  He was decorated with the Order of Lenin, and a province, a park, and various streets re-named in his honour. 
    But he had his faults too.  In 1933, Gorky co-edited a book on the White Sea-Baltic Canal and denied even a single prisoner died during its construction, but thousands had. As well, knowing that some Nazis were homosexual, a phrase was attributed to him that said ‘exterminate all homosexuals and fascism will vanish’.  Although he was himself was quoting another he was decidedly homophobic. 
    With the increase of Stalinist repression in 1935 Gorky was placed under unannounced house arrest. 
    Maxim Gorky died on the 18th June 1936 from pneumonia.  He was 68. 
    Stalin and Molotov were among those who carried Gorky's urn of ashes at his funeral.
    Show book