The Irish Goodbye
A new, genre-defying volume that explores family, marriage, motherhood, place, and coming of age with singular wit and emotional clarity. What can we learn from an ordinary life observed with extraordinary skill? In The Irish Goodbye , Beth Ann Fennelly writes of the small moments that shape a life, whether moving or perplexing or troubling or gladdening, in the process dignifying the diminutive through the act of attention. Fennelly explores her roles as a friend, wife, mother, and daughter, documenting a brush with an old flame or the devastating death of her sister in crystalline, precise sentences. The longer essays concern Fennelly's relationships--with a beloved mother-in-law, a decade