Irish Girl: Stories

Tim Johnston

Jan 2009 · Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction series Book 8 · University of North Texas Press

About this ebook

You have to read closely so as not to miss significant clues in these tightly coiled stories by Katherine Anne Porter Prize-winner Johnston (Never So Green), who ventures deeply into the consciousness of Midwesterners to unearth old tensions and buried animosities. In Water, he balances a marvelously multilayered plot involving a widowed mother of now grown twin boys (one healthy, one not) who recognizes how her protectiveness of her sons--even if one commits a horrible crime--supersedes the ties she holds to her past. Dirt Men finds Buddy Jr., the son of a local excavating entrepreneur, returned home in disgrace from the Colorado college where he was teaching and trapped within the intersection of his past and his hubris when the dismembered body of a woman is found in an auto salvage lot. In Things Go Missing, Johnston enters the mind of a young woman burglar whose seemingly senseless thefts (such as her shrink's autographed Michael Jordan poster) allows her to connect finally with someone, despite the pain she inflicts. These beautifully rendered tales deliver an emotional wallop.

Ratings and reviews

It is my belief that people unwittingly compartmentalize many of our most secret thoughts, insights, beliefs and feelings. In "Irish Girl", Tim Johnston seems to have a key to these compartments, and he paints the shadows of their contents into his characters in such a way that we see something of ourselves, comfortable, and not so comfortable. His stories are not just what we find on the page, but the undercurrent that lingers during and after each reading. Between the content and style, there is more sense of tragedy than triumph, and perhaps an edgy element of nerve. His writing is deft, his insight acute, and his stories smartly weave character and plot with internal and external dialogue that is simply remarkable.

About the author

Tim Johnston was born in Iowa City. He attended and graduated from the University of Iowa and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was the 2011 Jeny McKean Moore Writer -in Residence at the George Washington University. His stories have appeared in California Quarterly, Double Take, Best Life Magazine, The Iowa Review and Narrative Magazine. Irish Girl won an O. Henry Prize, the New Letters Award for Writers. The collection won the 2009 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. His other works include Two Years and Never So Green. In 2015 his title, Descent made The New York Times Best Seller List.