Matters of Life & Death

These are stories in the easiest and most pleasurable sense of the word. MacLaverty’s work is in a line from Chekhov, via Frank O’Connor – Anne Enright * Guardian *
I have not read anything as good for a long time * Literary Review *
Eleven exquisite examples of the genre… MacLaverty writes with consumamte skill… This is a book to cherish and one to read and re-read with pleasure in the skilful craft of its composition * Irish Independent *
MacLaverty is an exhilarating, tender, humorous wirter… who can set a scene and create a character with Chekhovian delicacy and economy… He reminds us that although life is a dangerous, painful business, we should never despair * Sunday Telegraph *
This stupendous new book - crucial, shattering sentences - that express, modestly, monumentally the achievement of this extraordinary writer. He is in behind your eyes before you feel his thinking knife …Matters of Life and Death is a great book. The explicit presiding literary presence is Chekhov. Not reached nor striven for, innate, rather – Candia McWilliams * Scottish Review of Books *
This most enticing of writers is also one of the most penetrating – Rosemary Goring * Herald *
His insights into the female mind are unique – Jackie McGlone * Scotland on Sunday *
A masterly control of pace and structure, pitch-perfect capturing of voice, characterisation that has spot on credibility, human pleasure in life’s satisfactions shadowed by awareness of the ways in which they can be jeopardised – Peter Kemp * Sunday Times *
MacLaverty has never written more powerfully or with greater authorial grip – Tom Adair * Scotsman *
This is a fine collection of short stories, sometimes brutal and shocking, but written with a sort of underground tenderness * The Times *

Bernard MacLaverty lives in Glasgow. He has written five previous collections of stories and five novels, including Grace Notes, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Midwinter Break, the Bord Gais Energy Irish Novel of the Year. He has written versions of his fiction for other media - radio and television plays, screenplays and libretti.

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