A Frank O'Connor Reader

A FRANK O'CONNOR READER, edited by Michael Steinman. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1994. xvi + 406 pages. $45 cloth; $17.50 paper.

A Frank O'Connor Reader is a sampler of the great Irish writer's works. It contains 17 stories, four of O'Connor's Gaelic-to-English translations of eighteenth-century Irish poems, seven "Self Portraits," and nine "Essays and Portraits." The stories are a mix of O'Connor's best-"Guests of the Nation," "In the Train," "The Majesty of the Law," "Michael's Wife," and "The Holy Door"-and his lesser known ones, including "Lonely Rock," "Music When Soft Voices Die," and "The Party." Also included are "Darcy in Tfr na nOg," a story O'Connor wrote in Gaelic (presented here in Richard B. Walsh's 1990 English translation), and "The Rebel," one that he did not finish to his satisfaction. Steinman notes that 15 of the 17 stories are currently unavailable elsewhere.

Selecting 17 representative stories from over 200 written by an author of O'Connor's stature is, no doubt, a daunting task, but it would be hard to fault Steinman for his choices. In these stories we find all of O'Connor's trademark themes-childhood, rebellion (both social and national), religious pressures, marriage tensions, communal alienation, emigration-all of course woven into the fabric of middle-class Irish life, yet broadly reflective of all Western society. The stories also display to full advantage O'Connor's...