The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin

On staff at the New Yorker for more than twenty years, an author who immigrated from Ireland at age seventeen shares some of the classic short stories published during her tenure at the magazine.

Literature & Fiction

BRENNAN, Maeve

United States

Houghton/Mifflin

From 1954 to 1981, Maeve Brennan contributed to The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" department under the pen name "the long-winded lady." Her unforgettable sketches - prose snapshots of life in the streets, diners, and cheap hotels just off Times Square - are a timeless, bittersweet tribute to what she calls the "most ambitious, most comical . . . the saddest and coldest and most human of cities."

The Long-Winded Lady: Notes from the New Yorker

History & Criticism

Mariner Books

These masterly stories trace the patterns of love in three middle-class Dublin families, patterns as intricate and various as Irish lace. "Maeve Brennan's book is full of small miracles," wrote the New York Times Book Review. "The magnificent title story is wide-ranging, savage, poignant, and should bring [Brennan] back to the table of modern fiction, where her place has been empty too long."

I don't believe I've read any other Christmas stories quite like the ones in Christmas Eve. Not all of the stories were about Christmas, but that doesn't mean you can't curl up with them near the fire at Christmas time and have a wonderful evening. The author tries wholeheartedly to envelop you in each of her 13 plots. I would recommend if you read no other tales in this book, read "Christmas Eve" and "The Springs of Affection".

Christmas Eve: 13 stories

Scribner

The Philip Larkin I Knew

The Philip Larkin I Knew traces the author’s close friendship with the poet and stretches over his 30 year tenure of office as librarian of the University of Hull, taking in his literary achievements from The Less Deceived (1955), through The Whitsun Weddings (1964), to High Windows (1974). It reveals Larkin in a new light – courteous, compassionate, generous, and a man of deep sensitivity and charm – with a natural sense of fun and instinctive wit; in contrast to the gloomy and somewhat objectionable portrait that has emerged since his death.

Manchester University Press

The Philip Larkin I Knew traces the author's close friendship with the poet and stretches over his 30 year tenure of office as librarian of the University of Hull, taking in his literary achievements from "The Less Deceived" (1955), through "The Whitsun Weddings" (1964), to "High Windows" (1974). It reveals Larkin in a new light - courteous, compassionate, generous, and a man of deep sensitivity and charm - with a natural sense of fun and instinctive wit; in contrast to the gloomy and somewhat objectionable portrait that has emerged since his death.

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Offers a collection of new short stories from the author of the critically acclaimed The Springs of Affection, several of which are set in the author's native Dublin or in Herbert's Retreat, a comfortable IrishAmerican community just up the Hudson River from New York City.

The Rose Garden: Short Stories

Contemporary

Counterpoint

After six years away, living in Paris with her disgraced and dying mother, a runaway from a disastrous marriage to her father, twenty-two-year-old Anastasia King returns to her grandmother's house only to face the condemnation of her father's family for choosing to stay with her mother. 30,000 first printing.

The Visitor

Literary

Reading Maeve Brennan is like watching a master jeweler construct a ticking watch from an array of tiny, inanimate parts. -Linda Barrett Osborne, New York Times Book ReviewSo good that I kept putting the book down to savor a description or perfect phrase, to hug myself with malicious joy, and to put off the evil hour when the stories would be done. -Katherine A. Powers, Boston Sunday GlobeWhen The Springs of Affection was published in 1997, the poet Eamon Grennan called it a classic, a book that placed Maeve Brennan among the best Irish short-story writers since Joyce. The Rose Garden gathers the rest of her short fiction, some of it set in her native Dublin but most of it in and around her adopted Manhattan. The riches here are many, but the collection's centerpiece is a suite of satirical scenes from suburban life, stories a little meaner than Cheever's, and wittier than Updike's (Los Angeles Times Book Review).

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Gardening & Landscape Design

The tale of Anastasia King who returns to her grandmother's house in Dublin after six long years away. She has been in Paris comforting her dying mother, who ran away from Anastasia's late father, her grandmother's only son. It is a story of Dublin and the unreachable side of the Irish temperament.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by BRENNAN, Maeve. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by BRENNAN, Maeve

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by BRENNAN, Maeve. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin

The Long-Winded Lady: Notes from the New Yorker

The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin

Christmas Eve: 13 stories

The Philip Larkin I Knew

The Philip Larkin I Knew

The Rose Garden: Short Stories

The Visitor

The Rose Garden: Short Stories

The Visitor