The Art Of The Glimpse

The #1 Irish Times bestseller An anthology of the very best Irish short stories, selected by Sinéad Gleeson, author of Constellations. There have been many anthologies of the short story as it developed in Ireland, but never a collection like this. The Art of the Glimpse is a radical revision of the canon of the Irish story, uniting classic works with neglected writers and marginalised voices – women, LGBT writers, Traveller folk-tales, neglected 19th-century authors and the first wave of 'new Irish' writers from all over the world now making a life in Ireland. Sinéad Gleeson brings together stories that range from the most sublime realism to the downright bizarre and transgressive, some from established literary figures and some that have not yet been published in book form. The collection draws on a tremendous spectrum of experience: the story of a prank come good by Bram Stoker; Sally Rooney on the love languages of the new generation; Donal Ryan on the pains of ageing; Edna O'Brien on the things we betray for love; James Joyce on a young woman torn between the familiar burdens and oppression of her home and the dangerous lure of romance and escape; and the internal monologue of a woman in a coma by Marian Keyes. Here too are vivid and less familiar stories by Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi, Oein De Bharduin, Blindboy Boatclub and Melatu Uche Okorie. Sinead Gleeson's anthology is a marvellous representation of a rich literary tradition renewing itself in the 21st century. Contributing authors include: Samuel Beckett, Sally Rooney, Melatu Uche Okirie, William Trevor, Marian Keyes, Kevin Barry, Edna O'Brien, Claire-Louise Bennett, Sheridan Le Fanu, Danielle McLaughlin, Máirtín Ó Cathain, Frances Molloy, Blindboy Boatclub, Elizabeth Bowen, Frank O'Connor, Chiamaka Emyi-Amadi, John McGahern, Anne Enright, Mike McCormack, Maeve Brennan, Oein de Bhairduin, Eimear McBride, Seán Ó'Faoláin, Cathy Sweeney.

Liza Baker, a rising star in the burgeoning Abstract Expressionist era, finds herself sidelined when she gets pregnant, and decides to have the child. Yet, against conventional wisdom, she’s convinced she can have a successful career and be a good mother to her daughter, Rouge. She takes a job teaching at a college and comes up against the harsh realities of the male-dominated art world. Unable to build a successful career, she watches as her former lover, whose work resembles hers, skyrocket to fame. Liza develops a drinking problem and often brings home artist lovers she’s met in the city. When Rouge meets Ben Fuller, one of Liza’s discarded lovers who subsequently fosters Rouge talent in photography, the complexity of the mother-daughter relationship takes on the added charge of a competition between the two, one that Liza tries to sabotage. THE GLIMPSE is a moving, unsentimental tale of the charged New York art world of the 1950s and the relationship between a mother and daughter as they grapple with their relationship that becomes pivotal to their artwork.

A stunning, poetic memoir “that will transport readers to a time when a nation’s youth searched for meaning against the backdrop of the Vietnam War” (Publishers Weekly). When she joins a pair of hitchhikers on a trip to California, a young Midwestern woman embarks on a journey of memory, beauty, and realization. This true story, set in 1971, recounts a fateful, nine-day trip into the American counterculture that begins on a whim and quickly becomes a mission to unravel a tragic mystery. The narrator’s path leads her to Berkeley, San Francisco, Mill Valley, Big Sur, and finally to an abandoned resort motel that has become a down-on-its-luck commune in the desert of southern Colorado. The Glimpse Traveler describes with wry humor and deep feeling what it was like to witness a peculiar and impossibly rich time. “A perceptive, engaging, intimate chronicle of the early 1970s, the road-weary hippie hitchhikers, the anti-war sentiment, the dope-induced haze. Boruch . . . captures this very specific, significant time and place with exquisite clarity and lyric detail and description.” —Dinty Moore, author of Between Panic and Desire

London, in the not too distant future, and people are now divided into Pures and Crazies, according to the results of a DNA test, with the Crazies sectioned off to live within 'the City', on the other side of the Community wall. Until the age of fifteen, Ana has lived a privileged existence amongst the Pures, but her whole world crumbles when she finds out that her DNA test was faked, which makes her one of the Crazies. She has just three years before she will be cast out of the Community . . . But Ana meets Pure-born Jasper and is offered a ticket to freedom when he asks her to Join with him. She looks forward to a 'normal' life, and fulfilling her dreams of becoming a musician. Then, just a week before the Joining ceremony, Jasper goes missing; it appears he is somewhere in the City, and no one knows why. Ana sets off on his trail, which takes her through the underbelly of society and into the pits of the human soul. And as she delves deeper into the mystery of Jasper's disappearance Ana uncovers some devastating truths that destroy everything she has grown up to believe, but she also learns to love as she has never loved before.

My book is about seeing things and feeling them from my own perspective. In my book, I write not only my personal experiences but also how the experiences of those who are dear to me affect me. My poems are written to reach out to readers. I go deep within myself and expose my personal feelings and some experiences in hope that readers will relate and know they are not alone.

In A Glimpse of Nothingness, celebrated mystery novelist Janwillem van de Wetering offers a sequel to his earlier memoir, The Empty Mirror, which concerned the author's experiences at a Zen monastery in Japan in the middle 1960s. Originally published in 1975, A Glimpse of Nothingness chronicles van de Wetering's time at the Moon Springs Hermitage in Maine. The book offers a complete and compelling description of the Zen path pursued by one sensitive Westerner who began his quest by seeking for the sense of it all-and who eventually came to realize at least a part of it. The follow-up to this book is van de Wetering's Afterzen.

Seasoned women are complex and full of flavor. We are strong but can be vulnerable. We are unique and worthy of celebration. Despite the boxes the world may try to squeeze us in, I know there is so much more to enrich our lives, because I have lived it. This is my call to you--to all women: be fearless.