Prosperity Drive [Paperback]

All the characters in this mesmerising book begin their journeys on Prosperity Drive. Everything radiates out – often internationally – from this suburban Dublin street, and everything eventually returns to it. It is an Ireland in miniature. Like an exploded novel,Prosperity Driveis laid out in stories, linked by its characters who appear and disappear, bump into each other in chance encounters, and join up again through love, marriage or memory.

The form ofProsperity Drivereflects and embodies the theme of dislocation. Exploring family ties and small coincidences, the stories are united by recurring imagery, echoing a kind of collective unconscious, and the magnetic force of place. While each story is discrete, and stands perfectly alone, when read together they have an extraordinary cumulative effect. Through the central drama of the Elworthy family, the collection has a strong narrative arc, very similar to that of a novel, making explicit to the reader secrets withheld from the characters.

A stunningly original construction, this journey in stories is very much like life itself: a series of circles and trajectories, a process of learning how to love and how to lose that love. Heartbreaking and hilarious in turn, always incisive and exquisitely written, this is a thrilling book by a major Irish writer.

MARY MORRISSY has published three novels: Mother of Pearl, The Pretender and The Rising of Bella Casey -- and a collection of short stories, A Lazy Eye(1993). She has won a Hennessy Award and a Lannan Literary Foundation Award and currently teaches at University College Cork.GB