Welcome to Litsy!

I hate the brown cover (I've given it a filter) but the stories are lovely.

If you like Colm Toíbin or Claire Keegan's short stories you might want to pick these up too.

I meet my mother in the library café, my natural mother, the unnatural one. She smells of cigarettes and damp hallways. Her hair is stringy, unwashed. She complains about the three bus rides across town, about the price they charge for a cup of tea in this part of the city. But I like it here in the library, with the weight of the books overhead...

My mother didn't come with us. There had always been some tension between the two women. I wonder if my mother was a little envious of what the used to call my aunt's 'independence'. The way she said it sounded pejorative, like the word she meant to use was selfishness.

Jaynie thinks of the bog cotton swaying over him in May, the heather purpling in September. She thinks of the whooper swans, grazing through the winter, rising in April with their long necks stretched, the shape of them in the sky as they pass overhead. She thinks of the midges weaving a burr of sound under the trees in May; the smell of wild mint crushed under hooves; the pink of wild orchids in July; the trill of the curlew, the sawing of snipe.

Brownest of the brown covers?