First published 2003
Women navigate the shifting landscape of modern Ireland in these twelve stories that move between stark realism and surreal fantasy. In "Some Hours in the Life of a Witch," a woman confronts the mundane details of her extraordinary identity. The surreal worlds of "Fulfillment" and "The Wife of Bath" blur the boundaries between ordinary existence and fantastical possibility. Each story captures women grappling with their roles in a society transformed by feminism yet still marked by its constraints. Ní Dhuibhne draws her characters through moments both magical and brutally real, revealing how women create meaning in lives that refuse to fit expected patterns. The collection moves from ultra-realistic portraits to dreamlike narratives, but each story centers on the same question: how do women define themselves when the old rules no longer apply? These stories find their power in the gap between what women are told they should want and what they actually discover they need.
Genres: fiction, short-stories, literary-fiction, fantasy, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: magical-realism, surreal
Setting: Ireland
Period: 21st-century
180 pages · Paperback · Attic Press Ltd.