MOVING ABOUT THE PLACE
SHORT STORIES
By
Evelyn Conlon
The Blackstaff Press 2021
https://blackstaffpress.com/moving-about-the-place-9781780733104
This fine collection of short stories and a novella takes us on journeys geographically and emotionally. The geography takes in Ireland, England, Australia, Italy, Monaco, Indonesia, Japan – adding useful background ingredients to the core stories in settings and scenery. It all helps the reader to frame pictures and create imagery as the characters do what they do. The emotion is in the spoken and unspoken words of people some of whom want to break free from life’s constraints, who dream of better lives elsewhere only to find that the grass is not necessarily as green as they imagined.
In one story, Hannah and her husband Simon emigrate to Australia only for Hannah to realise she is trapped in a foreign land with no immediate family and scarcely any local friends. Her new life is one of challenges and struggles.
Violet, incarcerated in an asylum, smuggles out a letter in a bottle which washes up on a shore. She had shot and wounded Mussolini and therefore was not considered of sound mind. She tells the finder who she is, what she’s done and why. It is a moving outpouring.
Other stories involve unhappy relationships, new beginnings, one in particular featuring recently widowed Mary who leaves Ireland for Australia and evolves into a social activist, campaigning to improve women’s lives, and another explores turmoil after a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Museum.
So, geography, emotion as well as humanity’s foibles layer these excellent stories, and Evelyn Conlon is to be saluted for taking us on these journeys. Some of them linger long after closing the book. And that’s a skill not enjoyed by all writers. Bravo.
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