The News From Dublin

This collection of nine stories spans continents and historical periods, linked by themes of secrecy, grief, displacement, and the weight of what remains unspoken.

In "The Journey to Galway," an unnamed mother at an estate called Coole learns during World War I that her son Robert, a fighter pilot, has been killed in action. Her servant Marian brings a telegram addressed to Robert's wife Margaret; the first words she sees are "Deeply regret," and then "killed in action." She resolves to carry the news to Galway, where Margaret and Robert's three children are staying. On the train, she reflects on Robert's cruelty to Margaret before the war, his affair with Margaret's best friend, and the way death will simplify him. She considers that he died in a British uniform and imagines how different it would feel had he died fighting for Irish independence in the 1916 Easter Rebellion. Arriving after dark, she waits in a side room. When Margaret asks, "Is he dead?" (12), the mother hands over the telegram and turns toward the window.

"A Free Man" follows Joe, a former secondary school teacher and convicted sex offender, beginning a solitary life in Barcelona after ten years in Arbour Hill Prison in Dublin. His siblings have severed all ties, and his only acquaintance is Denis Doran, who co-owns an Irish bar and was his classmate at Maynooth, Ireland's principal Catholic seminary. Joe recalls a brief sexual encounter with Denis during their seminary years, which Denis flatly denied afterward. Advised by his legal team to plead guilty to all charges, Joe served ten years of a fifteen-year sentence. In prison, a psychologist pushed him to confront his crimes, asking whether he was a beloved teacher who happened to abuse or an abuser who happened to teach. The rehearsed confession Joe eventually delivered brought him no relief. In Barcelona, Denis helps with practical matters but maintains strict boundaries. When Denis asks if Joe feels sorry, Joe blurts out, "I am sorry I was found out" (43). He settles into a quiet routine until one evening three Irish tourists recognize him through a restaurant window. Joe resolves to walk past them as though he were someone else.

"Sleep" is narrated by an Irish man living in New York with a younger Jewish-American male partner. The narrator has recurring nightmares linked to his brother's death alone in a Dublin house on a Saturday night. After a severe episode frightens his partner into leaving, the narrator flies to Dublin and undergoes hypnosis with a psychiatrist. Under hypnosis, he experiences what he understands as his brother's dying: a gradual emptying until nothing remains. Afterward, he says, "I became him" (65). Back in New York, his partner's texts grow sparse. The narrator wakes alone, uncertain whether he cries out in the dark.

"The News from Dublin" is set in 1940s Ireland. Maurice, a secondary school teacher in Enniscorthy, learns that his younger brother Stephen, who has tuberculosis, has read about a new drug called streptomycin. Their father was interned at Frongoch, a Welsh camp for Irish republicans after the 1916 Rising, alongside Jim Ryan, the newly appointed minister for health. The family sends Maurice to Dublin to ask the minister for help. At Leinster House, the seat of the Irish parliament, Maurice waits in the visitors' gallery and meets the minister in the bar inside the parliament building. The minister offers little: The drug is still being tested, and he suggests the sanatorium. Maurice misses his train, wanders Dublin, enters a church but does not pray, and dreads returning home with nothing to report.

In "A Sum of Money," Dan, a teenage boarder at St. Peter's, a diocesan school in Wexford, learns to pick locks after watching his father open his mother's cashbox with wire. Receiving no pocket money, he steals small amounts from fellow students' lockers. Frank Kirwan, a boarder whose mother drowned in what was not considered an accident, catches him but says nothing. Dan escalates, stealing a large sum from a prefect's locker and hiding it in his dormitory cubicle. After a hurling match, Dan returns to find the money gone. On the night before Easter holidays, the parish priest drives Dan home with his father in the front seat, neither man addressing him. At a gate on the lane, Dan is made to get out, and the car drives on. He walks through mud and rain to the house, where his parents seem unable to speak. Dan goes quietly to his room.

"Barton Springs" is a brief meditation in which a narrator driving through Texas with a companion recalls swimming at Barton Springs pool in Austin seven months after his brother's death, reflecting that the dead have gone and only memory is pure.

"Summer of '38" is set in a Pyrenean valley town. Marta, now elderly, is asked to meet a retired Francoist general, Rudolfo Ramirez, who served there during the Spanish Civil War. She remembers their affair in the summer of 1938, when Franco's soldiers occupied the town. When Rudolfo departed without warning, Marta discovered she was pregnant. She married Paco Vendrell, a man who worked at the local dam and had pursued her for years. Paco raised their daughter Rosa as his own, loving her best of their three daughters. Rosa became a doctor in Barcelona, and Rudolfo's traits reappeared in her sons. Marta refuses the lunch invitation but invites Rosa to visit and shows her old photographs. When Rosa asks why her father appears in none of them, Marta replies that Paco always took the photographs. After Rosa leaves, Marta imagines Rudolfo and Rosa traveling in opposite directions, neither aware of the other.

"Five Bridges" follows Paul, an undocumented Irish plumber who has lived in San Francisco for over thirty years on a tourist visa. Planning to return permanently to Ireland, he breaks the news to his twelve-year-old daughter Geraldine, from whom he was absent for her first four years. She asks for one wish: a family hike to a lodge on Mount Tamalpais with Paul, her mother Sandra, and Sandra's husband Stan. On the hike, Geraldine asks pointed questions about his immigration status. At the lodge, she insists on sharing a room with Paul. After she falls asleep, Paul stands on the balcony in the dark, knowing he flies to Dublin on Monday and will likely never return.

The longest story, "The Catalan Girls," spans five decades. Three sisters, Núria, Conxita, and Montse, emigrated as children from Barcelona to Argentina with their widowed mother. Each took a different path: Núria married into wealth; Conxita became companion to the wealthy Maria Luisa Bustamante; Montse, the youngest, used Núria's identity documents to start work at sixteen and later became mistress to Rogelio Freitas, a married businessman. After Rogelio died, his son Alfonso terminated the arrangement, and Montse moved to the small town of Chivilcoy to work in a garage office. When their aunt Julia dies and leaves the sisters a house in the Pyrenean village of Burg, Montse secretly sells her Chivilcoy home, carries her savings as cash, and plans to stay permanently. In Burg, Núria puts the house up for sale without consulting her sisters, but the solicitor confirms that under Julia's will, any one sister can block the sale. Montse objects. On the morning of departure, Montse takes Núria's Spanish passport, planning to use it to claim a state pension in her sister's name. Alone in the house, she finds a bottle of perfume Núria left with a note: "I thought you might like this" (284). For a moment, she wants to call out the news to Aunt Julia before remembering Julia is gone.