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The China Factory (2012)

by Mary Costello(Favorite Author)

4.01 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1906539219 (ISBN13: 9781906539214)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

The Stinging Fly Press

review 1: I'm a great fan of short stories and know how hard they can be to get just right.This is a wonderful collection, people dancing about each other, trying and often failing to relate.Costello deals gently with her characters and although not much happens in stories here, there is a strong undercurrent of emotion, expressed or withheld.The collection is worth reading if only for the final story in the collection - 'The Sewing Room', a compassionate story about an older retiring teacher looking bcak on a her early life when she had to relinquish the child born out of wedlock and the effect on her life. One of my favourite stories ever!
review 2: In her debut collection, Mary Costello has produced something more significant than most writers do in an entire career. ... more Each superbly crafted story carries a novel’s worth of characterisation, insight and empathy. If you still consider the short story incapable of satisfying you, try these ones! In some respects, Costello is on well-trodden ground (for the Irish short story, at least) - emotional isolation, failure of communication, the death of hope. But this is a world where traditional Ireland is constantly rubbing up against modernity - an internet romance provides the engine for one story, an encounter with an undercover policewoman another. Throughout the book, contemporary cultural references (to books and music, in particular) run alongside deft observations of the rhythms of rural life. The sheer quality of Costello’s prose – lyrical but never pretentious – makes the work a joy to read, even as she deals with some harrowing subject-matter (the death of a child, a diagnosis of terminal illness). While the outside world is a lure it is also, in many cases, the locus of tragedy and loss – demonstrated most strikingly in one of her strongest stories, And Who Will Pay Charon? (a story with a killer opening line, incidentally, ‘I heard she was out’.) At the heart of the collection is the yearning of so many of these characters for a fuller realisation of their secret selves. Indeed, The Astral Plane and The Sewing Room (another favourite) seem to suggest that this is where love itself resides. First books of this quality are very, very rare. Highly recommended. less

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