Book review: Collection of visionary tales

Mary Morrissy has a gift of delivering captivating short story collections of warmth and humanity. Picture: David Keane

• Twenty-Twenty Vision 
• Mary Morrissy 
• Lilliput, €15.95 

The title is not just about eyesight: Most of these stories are set in 2020, the year of the pandemic when normal life was totally disrupted, and people often found themselves isolated, with more time than normal to look back over their lives.

This is Mary Morrissy’s third collection of stories. She has also published four acclaimed novels and has taught creative writing for 20 years both in the US and at University College Cork.

She is a master of the Chekhovian/Alice Munro-style short story, in which ordinary events from everyday life and subtle characterisation, rather than dramatic situations, shed new light on the human condition. 

As you would expect from such an expert, every single story is excellent in its way.

Like her 2016 collection, Prosperity Drive, the stories share a cast of characters who reappear in various stories. 

Morrissy, born in 1957, is clearly writing about her own generation, delicately referred to in the press release as “a generation of men and women entering later life” while the stories are said to form “a tapestry of middle-age regret, hindsight, romance, death and lost love”. 

Note the consistent avoidance of the word ‘old’.

Of course nowadays people in their 60s are 70s are no longer ‘old’ in the traditional sense, but many continue to have active, interesting lives, enhanced by their memories, both good and bad. 

You could argue that older people, with their wealth of lived experience, present far richer material for short stories than younger people.

‘Onset’, the very short opening story is a memorable illustration of one of the many perils of old age, as Delma attempts to make sense of the fact that Chris’ husband Jim, “had been the victim of ‘a beasting’” at the beach, without letting Chris know that she is not familiar with the expression ‘beasting’. 

The next time we meet Chris and Delma, Delma is in a care home suffering from dementia, and it is Chris’ turn to get lost.

However, these are not depressing stories. Morrissy’s work is known for its warmth and humanity, and sharp barbs of wit. 

Greeting someone wearing a garish blue and yellow blouse with white zig-zags is described as “like walking into a lightning storm”. 

In ‘Mature People’, an older woman joins a creative writing workshop at Trinity and discovers that her ambition is not highbrow enough: “Years of dulling, necessary work had knocked that out of her. Life and single mothering and bad TV had thinned her emotions.”

The title story is one of several about having children versus childlessness. Adrienne opts for an abortion without telling her husband, Patrick. 

He had changed once they were married, from being a wild man “who drank and smoked everything”, to being the perfect husband, only waiting for Adrienne to get pregnant: “He wanted the full suburban.”

She could not face it, and lied about having another lover to explain why she was leaving such a paragon.

In her subtle way, Morrissy presents an acerbic view of younger people who come across as shallow, self-obsessed, and gullible. 

‘Remission’, one of the stand-out stories, centres on the contrasting obsessions of an older woman suffering the after-effects of chemotherapy and a much younger man on a night-out.

The story I liked best was ‘Curriculum Vitae’, an apparently partly autobiographical piece measured out in a list of all the awful jobs the protagonist has had before ending up on a supermarket checkout, serving her ex-husband. 

It seems very likely that this person could have been Mary Morrissy, if her literary talent had not been discovered and encouraged early in her life.

It seems to signal that her next book will be a memoir. That would be a treat.