THE BOATMAN AND OTHER STORIES

The latest from Irishman O'Callaghan (My Coney Island Baby, 2019, etc.) is a collection of 12 mostly quiet but often deeply affecting stories.

What these stories have in common is that they're understated, patiently told, and deeply attentive to the perils and poignancies of daily life. Still, there's plenty of variety here. Some stories (especially "The Border Fox," about a mission into Northern Ireland that goes awry, and "Beginish," about a young couple in love who decide to row out to an abandoned island to live rough and free for a month) feature pulse-quickening events. Some have exotic settings in place ("Segovia") or time (at least one takes place, in the main, 90 years ago). But the collection's best pieces stay close to home and cleave close to the bone. At least two occupy a borderland between fiction and a kind of imagined memoir. Among these is the remarkable "A Death in the Family," in which, circa 1980, a grandfather thinks back 50 years to the harrowing last night of his older brother Jimmy's life—and imagines, years hence, his beloved grandson, Billy, being able to find the proper words to tell the stories, "and through them and him I'll get to live a little bit again." Other standouts are the title story, about a fisherman who must dig his son's grave, and the sly, subtle, poignant "Love Is Strange," which ingeniously entwines a tale of first love with the account of a boy's kindness to an elderly outcast.

Low-key, nuanced, moving—an impressive collection.