Twenty-Twenty Vision

Christine Beckett is faced with some home truths when her best friend, suffering from dementia, decides after a lifetime to be honest with her; Olivia Fletcher has an epiphany at a vaccination centre about a man who has loved her for decades; Bernard Travers revisits an unlikely romantic interlude with the mother of his teenage pen pal that has sustained him for 40 years. 

Twenty-Twenty Vision is a collection of interlinked short stories about hindsight and late middle-age regret subtly framed within the first year of the pandemic. It’s also a portrait, an emotional map of the 1950s generation moving into the third age with a mixture of apprehension and regret. The characters make chastening discoveries – one finds after a lifetime that she’s a bullying victim, another draws up a curriculum vitae of her emotional life when there are no jobs left to apply for. 

The work focuses on a handful of characters – Christine, Olivia, Bernard, Freddie, Triona and Eva – as they revisit their past and grapple with late-life perspectives. The overarching narrative is connected by character and situation, and united in theme, to form a tapestry of late middle-age reckoning.

'"During that time with you I was more alive and more unhappy than I had ever been" says a woman speaking of her affair with a married man in this collection of interlinking short stories. The line is sharp, pitiless and heartbreaking, just like everything else in this marvellous book.'

-- Carlo Gebler

'Mary Morrissy always writes with great insight, deep humanity and an oftentimes acerbic eye. These stories are assured little portraits of very ordinary people finding pathos, beauty and profundity in their very ordinary lives. I challenge you not to see something of yourself reflected here.'

-- Jan Carson

'I adore Mary Morrissy's stories. Fresh, deft, succinct, each one is like a dart to the heart. There is also the particular pleasure, here as in Prosperity Drive, of encountering the same characters in different ways, sometimes fleetingly, sometimes from a completely opposing perspective, complicating and deepening our relationships with them and giving an additional, satisfying and heartbreaking unity to this collection as a whole.'

-- Lucy Caldwell

'In Twenty-Twenty Vision, Mary Morrissy gives us deeply self-mining, gorgeously human characters, who miss neither tricks nor beats. Her players step with rueful intelligence – often hilariously – through the conundrums of ordinary but ruffled lives. This is insightful, vivid fiction from an accomplished storyteller who is, simply, one of our best.'

-- Nuala O'Connor

'There are some great characters … the stories feel real.'

-- RTE Radio 1, Arena

'Feels like eavesdropping on a group of friends on a night out … Characterised by both humanity and barbed wit … A cleverly made tapestry of middle-age regret, romance, death and love.'

-- Henrietta McKervey, Irish Times

'A work of supreme craftsmanship that aches with hindsight … honest and peppered with wry humour throughout'

-- Anne Cunningham, Irish Independent

'One of Ireland’s finest writers … These are exquisite stories.'

-- Books for Breakfast

'Captivating … [Mary] is a master of the Chekhovian/Alice Munro-style short story ... as you would expect from such an expert, every single story is excellent in its own way.'

-- Alannah Hopkin, Irish Examiner

'Deeply wise and insightful, and beautifully written with unforgettable characters.'

-- Edel Coffey, The Gloss

Mary Morrissy is an award-winning Irish novelist (The Hennessy Award, Lannan Foundation Award) and short story writer, the author of four novels, Mother of Pearl, The Pretender, The Rising of Bella Casey and Penelope Unbound, as well as two collections of short stories, A Lazy Eye and Prosperity Drive. She has 20 years’ experience of teaching creative writing at university level in the US and Ireland. Until May 2020, she was the associate director of creative writing at University College Cork. 

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