A BORDER STATION: Stories

by Shane Connaughton ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 1990

No pigs in the kitchen, but the barnyard is not far away in this bland and readable collection of stories--all filled up with literary pretension by the Irish author of the screenplay for the hit film My Left Foot. These seven related short stories are set at the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, and are seen mostly from the viewpoint of the young boy looking out at a Tobacco Road sort of life with his clenching-fist police sergeant father and all-suffering mother, who spends most of her time wringing her hands or revealing her varicose veins. The boy is still sleeping with the mother (with an occasional lick at her breasts) while Dad is condemned to sleep alone. In ""Lino,"" the father is revealed as having the onset of epilepsy, which has to be concealed from his superiors and the townsfolk; while in ""Out,"" the boy is terrified of a neighbor afflicted with infantile paralysis, and a ludicrous scene ensues with a sow giving birth to 21 piglets in the mud with the retarded man going on, ""Ughod oy Ughood oy."" In ""Ojus,"" the boy is packed off to boarding school with a parting gift of a plaster of Paris impression of the father's boot. The boy throws it off the train (""He would never need reminding of his father's footprints""). In the best story, ""Arson,"" the boy tries to burn down the police barracks, compares the size of his penis with that of his friend Gore, and stows away with two Protestant ministers who are trying to preach to Catholics about the absurdity of the Catholic belief in the transubstantiation, but who barely escape with their lives. A collection of stories that owes more to the art of knitting than to the art of the short story: some good wool mixed with a lot of synthetic.

Pub Date: March 16, 1990

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990

Categories: FICTION