An Arrow in Flight: Selected Stories of Mary Lavin [Paperback]

One of the great overlooked voices of modern Irish literature, once hailed as “magnificent” byTheNew York Times, Mary Lavin’s fiction is now being revived for a new generation of readers in this definitive volume, selected and introduced by Colm Tóibín.

During her lifetime, Irish American writer Mary Lavin was a prominent literary figure. Throughout the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, her stories were frequently featured inThe New Yorker, compared to the works of Chekhov, James, and Wharton, and celebrated in major publications, ranging fromTheNew York TimestoTheIrish Times. Lavin won prestigious awards, such as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Katherine Mansfield Prize, and her influence extends to many of today’s great fiction writers. Yet, despite her incredible success, Lavin’s once acclaimed body of work has largely fallen out of print, lost and erased from the canon.

Now,An Arrow in Flightbrings together sixteen of Lavin’s most powerful stories, selected and introduced by Colm Tóibín. In witty and sharp prose, these tales explore familial tensions, relationships between men and women, and the social mores and biases of 20th-century Irish society, from the streets of Dublin to the fields of County Meath. Essential for any fan of contemporary Irish literature,An Arrow in Flightshines a much-needed light on “a master of the genre” (Los Angeles Times) who has, for too long, remained in the shadows.Mary Lavin was born in Massachusetts in 1912 but moved to Ireland as a child. Her first collection of short stories, Tales from Bective Bridge, published in 1942, was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and launched her acclaimed career in this genre. Her stories appeared inThe New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, among other magazines. Herlƒ%