Collected Short Stories Book

Twenty-three stories, all with fully realized characters and situations: this is a very good book, a wonderfully satisfying book. I was happy to read in the introduction (by Seamus Heaney) that McLaverty loved the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins. So do I. That love, that common note, is found in the great care taken with the everyday, the common, appreciating the worthiness of those things and those people. "Pigeons," "Aunt Suzanne," "The Priest's Housekeeper" are favourites; many of the stories have a child protagonist, dealing with serious things (and not just serious to a child).