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Billy O'Callaghan
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The Boatman and Other Stories Kindle Edition

by Billy O'Callaghan (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.2 out of 5 stars 35 ratings

“I know of no writer on either side of the Atlantic who is better at exploring the human spirit under assault than Billy O’Callaghan.”—Robert Olen Butler

The prizewinning Irish short-story writer and author of the highly praised novel, My Coney Island Baby, delivers his most accomplished book of short fiction to date—a poignant story collection that “grips from the opening page” (Bernard MacLaverty). 

These are twelve poignant, quietly dazzling, and carefully crafted stories that explore the resiliency of the human heart and its ability to keep beating in the wake of bereavement, violence, lost love, and incomparable trauma and grief.

 Spanning a century and two continents, from the muddy fields of Ireland to a hotel room in Paris, a dingy bar in Segovia to an airplane bound for Taipei, The Boatman and Other Stories follows an unforgettable cast of characters. Three gunshots on the Irish border define the course of a young man’s life; a writer clings fast to a star-crossed affair with a woman who has never been fully within his reach; a fisherman accustomed to hard labor rolls up his sleeves to dig a grave for his child; and a pair of newlyweds embark on their first adventure, living wild on the deserted Beginish Island.
 

Ranging from the elegiac to the brutally confrontational, these densely layered tales reveal the quiet heroism and gentle dignity of ordinary life. Billy O’Callaghan is a master celebrant of the smallness of the human flame against the dark: its strength and its steady brightness.

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  1. Print length
    242 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Harper Perennial
  4. Publication date
    April 28, 2020
  5. File size
    3.7 MB
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
    Enabled
  8. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
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From the Publisher

boatman, short story, john banville, praise

O'callaghan, beautiful story, kathleen macmahon, sunday times

classical stories, sonatas, delightful stories

deeply attentive stories, daily life, massive collection

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Billy O'Callaghan's work is at once subtle and direct, warm and clear-eyed, and never less than beautifully written...This writer is the real thing."

-- "John Banville, author of Nightspawn"

About the Author

Billy O'Callaghan won the Irish Book Award for the title story of his collection The Things We Lose, the Things We Leave Behind and is the author of two other short story collections, In Exile and In Too Deep. His debut novel, The Dead House, was an Irish Times bestseller. He was a finalist for the 2016 COSTA Short Story Award, the Glimmer Train Prize, the Faulkner Wisdom Prize, and the Seán Ó Faoláin Award and has published his stories widely on both sides of the Atlantic. He resides in County Cork, Ireland.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07V9X3Z5V
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial (April 28, 2020)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 28, 2020
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3.7 MB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 242 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 out of 5 stars 35 ratings

About the author

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Billy O'Callaghan

Billy O'Callaghan

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Billy O'Callaghan was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1974, and is the critically acclaimed author of four novels and four short story collections.

His breakthrough novel, 'My Coney Island Baby', published in 2019 by Jonathan Cape (and Harper in the U.S.) & translated into nine languages, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award. The French edition, 'Les Amants de Coney Island', translated by Carine Chichereau and published by Grasset, was a finalist for the Prix de traduction 2021 du Centre Culturel Irlandais.

His fourth short story collection, 'The Boatman, and Other Stories', was published in 2020 by Jonathan Cape (UK) & Harper Perennial (US). Stories from the collection were shortlisted for the COSTA Short Story Award and the An Post Irish Book Award.

His acclaimed 2021 novel, 'Life Sentences' (Jonathan Cape), reached no. 3 on the fiction bestsellers list in Ireland. It was published in Czech by Paseka, French by Christian Bourgois, and in the U.S. by David R. Godine in April 2022, with further editions scheduled in German (btb Verlag) and Croatian (Petrine Knjige) translation.

His work has been translated into over a dozen languages and earned him numerous honours, including Bursary Awards for Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland and the Cork County Council, a Cork City 'One City, One Book' selection, and, in 2013, a Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Award for the Short Story of the Year.

His short stories have appeared in more than 100 magazines and literary journals around the world, including: Agni, the Bellevue Literary Review, the Chattahoochee Review, the Fiddlehead, the Kenyon Review, the Kyoto Journal, the Los Angeles Review, London Magazine, Narrative, Ploughshares, Salamander, the Saturday Evening Post and Winter Papers.

His latest novel, 'The Paper Man', was published by Jonathan Cape, and in the U.S. by David R. Godine, in May 2023, and is forthcoming in Czech from Paseka.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
35 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Claire Fullerton
    5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional
    Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    It's daunting to think that no matter how I review this exceptional collection of short stories by Billy O'Callaghan, I will never adequately express my full sentiments, for how to articulate that O'Callaghan is simply the best writer I've come across in ages? His short stories are a treatise on the human experience, the impressionable psyche, the vulnerable human heart. He crafts his stories with the fluidity of a wave that builds slowly, crests, then turns in on itself after enveloping sight and sight unseen. To read The Boatman and Other Stories is to read a master at his craft. You'll be swept away by the rich detail and nuance of commonplace in the hands of this powerful storyteller. I cannot recommend this collection hardily enough. Read it, treasure it, then do as I did and put it in pride of place on your bookshelf.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Howard F. Jaeckel
    4.0 out of 5 stars Two All-Time Greats
    Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2024
    Verified Purchase
    I acquired a copy of this book because I had been blown away by Billy O'Callaghan's novel "The Paper Man," which I discovered quite by accident. Although the quality of O’Callaghan’s writing is evident throughout, I didn’t find most of the stories memorable.

    But “Beginish” had me fearing for its characters with an emotion beyond what the printed word can normally evoke in me, and “A Death in the Family” left me exclaiming, to myself and aloud, “what a masterpiece.” Both stories are among the greatest I have read.

    Two all-time-greats in a collection of twelve? Not at all bad.

    Billy O’Callaghan is the real thing. His discovery by a wider audience seems inevitable.
    One person found this helpful
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  • David Curry
    5.0 out of 5 stars A gem from across the pond
    Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2021
    In “A Sense of Rain,” one of the stories in THE BOATMAN AND OTHER STORIES, the Irish author Billy O’Callaghan indulges in having a character have difficulty reading Faulkner:

    “ ‘Still Faulkner?’ Ellie said, watching me in the mirror. I looked up from the book.

    “I’m persevering. Some pages, I think I can almost understand what I’m reading.”

    A little later: “The book lay tented open on my chest, and I picked it up, looked at the page number and tried to memorize it, knowing that without the number I’d never find my place again. And there’d be no question of me ever trying to start over. It was a slim book and I was already well into the second half, but I could only stay with it for so long. Already my strength was waning. To avoid despair, I stopped myself from analyzing or summarizing what I’d so far read.”

    That’s a mighty remarkable thing for any writer to have done, and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.

    I could call O’Callaghan’s style understated, but I would have to add that its understatement is weighted in a way that can be moving or even devastating. This author manages both harshness and gentleness with perfect accuracy and ease, and his eloquence never seems reached for or strained. He’s able to take the simplest materials and spin them into memorable narratives.

    “Love Is Strange” and “Wildflowers” should surely start showing up in the anthologies.

    The narrator of“A Death in the Family,” the final story in the collection, is a grandmother. In the last paragraph, speaking of her young grandson, she says, “We’re as close as clapped hands, he and I.” What follows that and closes the book left me in tears and with the hair on my arms rising.
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  • CS
    5.0 out of 5 stars Stories That Share the Joys, Challenges, and the Beauty of Life
    Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2020
    Twelve stories that will take you to Paris, to Spain, Taipei, and, of course, to Ireland, as well as taking you back and forth through time, examining such themes as grief, love, fear, choice, loss, heartbreak, consequences, along with the wonders, as well as the sometimes unexpected brutalities, of life.

    These days, it seems that less-than-happy news is almost constant, so this quote from the title story, The Boatman really spoke to me.

    ’As I age, I find myself favouring novels and stories that I know will end happily, not because that makes them more believable but because the very inverse of that is true, because their sense of reality softens and they again get to be something more than the world as it has shown itself to me. Not bad all the way to is core and rarely intentionally so, not without its beautiful moments, but neither naturally set up, it seems, for happy endings. Because in the end there’s always death, and always broken hearts. Happy stories, at least, get to hold the air of magic.’

    And even though not all of these stories have happy endings, there’s so much beauty in the way that O’Callaghan shares them that, at least for me, they always hold that air of magic. A magic to soften the twists and turns of life, a beacon of light to remind us that we are not alone in our struggles and sorrows, that we are all small against the world.

    Many thanks for the ARC provided by HarperCollinsPublishers / Harper Perrenial
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  • JoAnn S
    4.0 out of 5 stars Short stories
    Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2020
    A great collection of short stories. I enjoyed each selection. I received an arc from Netgalley and the publisher and this is my unbiased review.
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  • KasaC
    5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful -- A writer to follow
    Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2020
    It is a well-known fact that the Irish are supreme storytellers. Billy O'Callaghan lives up to this praise. I've often noted that a book of well written collection, featuring well crafted stories without a clinker in the bunch, is more taxing for a reader than a novel of similar length. Such is The Boatman. Twelve stories delving into the human heart, each of which demands attention and immersion, to be nipped at over a period of days and not devoured in one sitting. Can't be done. Each features a person sometimes at a crossroads which is a usual trope, but in many there is a look backward at a life that directed them there. The final sentence of "Wildflowers" sums this up: "He could tell himself, and believe, that he was who he'd always been, in one breath an old man, in the next still very much a boy, and he kept his losses close because time's barriers were soft." An old woman remembers a lost brother, a woman fleeing something unexplained in a hot, Spanish city, doomed lovers -- there is not a clichéd character in the mix. And the story from which the collection gets its title required for me a fistful of Kleenex. Highly recommended.
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Top reviews from other countries

  • carmel o flynn
    5.0 out of 5 stars Stories well told and descriptive
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 17, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    Great book to read great stories based on real people and how life was in early 1900s in ireland.
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  • s harri
    5.0 out of 5 stars Definitely worth buying!
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 11, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    My husband was the “model” for the cover as his daughter designed it! So of course it beautiful. Enjoying the story, well written.
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  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Superb
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 25, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    Beautiful collection of stories describing parts of Cork in the 1930’s and 1940’s by a very talented and descriptive story teller.
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  • rvr2
    5.0 out of 5 stars perfect conditionon
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 3, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    Great thanks
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  • Anna
    5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant writing
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 9, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    Superb writing
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