Salvage, an extraordinary ‘autobiography of the autobiography of reading’, has found a form that is not quite literary criticism, not quite autobiography, but that troubles the architecture of both.
‘He brings his bottom lip over his top lip and makes it touch his small nose. It makes him look older somehow and like he’s disappointed in me. I remember feeling disappointed in my father when I asked him simple questions and received complicated answers.’
SUMMER’S HERE! Our summer issue with new work by Róisín Leggett Bohan, Niamh Boyce, Susannah Dickey, Yan Ge, Alice Lyons, Alan McMonagle, Luke Morgan plus many, many more is now available.
Established in 2022, the €2000 prize, sponsored by Felicity Bryan Associates, is awarded annually to an emerging fiction writer published in the magazine during the previous year. Rosa’s winning story ‘Breathwork’ was published in our Summer 2025 issue.
‘A radio station blares such shitty muzak that I double-check to make sure this is, in fact, the man who was my father back in Dublin.’
It is not irrelevant that this, Guyotat’s parting statement to the world, is related in such lucid terms: he wanted to be loud and clear, to smash the window, to wake the sleeper up. It is not irrelevant that Guyotat writes, in this book, at the age of 78: ‘Life, as repetition, isn’t worth it; only the first time counts.’
‘He brings his bottom lip over his top lip and makes it touch his small nose. It makes him look older somehow and like he’s disappointed in me. I remember feeling disappointed in my father when I asked him simple questions and received complicated answers.’
‘A radio station blares such shitty muzak that I double-check to make sure this is, in fact, the man who was my father back in Dublin.’
Image by Abdul Bacet ‘This operation is important to us. Very important. Even more important than lessons, homework, or solving riddles. We can’t mess this up, because Ziwar’s fate is at stake.’
‘I could have no quarrel with the original jury’s verdict, or so Farrington told me anyway. Agent McNally was as dead as dead could be, and by my hand.’
‘On another night she might join the card game, but she didn’t have it in her to be sociable this evening, to be the carefree Irish girlfriend who loved a party, who smiled at their stories from home as if she recognised the places and people alternately lauded and reviled within.’
‘He still looks like a normal human in front of her, albeit with a well-fitted coat, suited to his frame, to his needs. What does he do in summer, she wonders, what does he do in changing rooms? What does he do in bed? What if he rolls over and kills it?’
June Caldwell
The Stinging Fly Podcast
Ella Gaynor
The Stinging Fly Podcast
Simon Costello & Jane Robinson
The Stinging Fly Podcast
‘He brings his bottom lip over his top lip and makes it touch his small nose. It makes him look older somehow and like he’s disappointed in me. I remember feeling disappointed in my father when I asked him simple questions and received complicated answers.’
‘A radio station blares such shitty muzak that I double-check to make sure this is, in fact, the man who was my father back in Dublin.’