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Three Dublin families

Characters ruminate, doors are shut and relationships falter as one person’s thoughts grate on another’s in these subtle, tightly-knit stories

11 February 2023

9:00 AM

11 February 2023

9:00 AM

The Springs of Affection Maeve Brennan

Peninsula Press, pp.348, 10.99

A man ignores his wedding anniversary and is so sickened by the bowl of flowers his wife has placed by his bed that he drops them and breaks the precious cut glass. Another man is so enraged by seeing his wife close the kitchen door when he comes in from work that he enters a state of fevered reverie where he concludes ‘nothing in his life made sense’.

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