Irish Times: Books to Look Out for in 2025
– I Hear You
[ About I Hear You ]
This collection of stories, written especially for BBC Radio 4, includes a ten-part sequence: ‘The Circus’, set around Cliftonville Circus, where five roads meet in North Belfast.
It’s five minutes from the nationalist Troubles flashpoint of Ardoyne, where Paul grew up. It’s close to Holy Cross Girls’ School, where protests targeting primary school children drew international attention. The Circus is situated in the poorest part of the Belfast – it is also the most divided.
Each road leads to a different area – a different class – a different religion. The Circus explores where old Belfast clashes with the new around acceptance, change, class and diversity. But this is 2024 and a fresh energy exists.
Other stories include ‘Tickles’, a story about a man visiting his mother in a dementia ward where he finds he is the one who had forgotten important things; ‘Cuckoo’, about a man’s collapse and surgery – where he feels something more sinister has happened to him; and ‘Daddy Christmas’, where a gay man writes a letter to the son he never had.
[ My Review ]
I Hear You by Paul McVeigh published March 3rd as part of the Salt Modern Stories series which ‘showcases contemporary short story writers born, or working in, the British Isles. Beautiful paperback originals in A format, pocket editions, with classic Salt covers, that will form a must-have set for all story enthusiasts and book collectors.’
I Hear You comprises a collection of short stories that were initially commissioned and subsequently broadcast by BBC Radio Four, hence the title. With the time allocated to the radio story slot being fourteen minutes, Paul McVeigh had the extra challenge of focusing his writing to accommodate this constraint and to also be mindful that his words were being aired in the mid-afternoon. These limitations provided Paul McVeigh with the impetus to write a sharp and compact collection that has been described by Kit de Waal as ‘brave, honest, raw and funny’.
Consisting of three standalone stories and ten individual, yet interwoven, stories, I Hear You provides something for every reader. There is a tenderness to Tickles as it recounts the story of a mother and son, as he visits her in a nursing home. In Cuckoo there is a sense of the surreal with what could be described as an irrational thread running through the storyline, yet it works. And the third story Daddy Christmas is heavily imbued with a sadness, a regret of what will probably never be. The ten-part sequence with the over-arching title of Circus draws together individuals from different, but neighbouring, strata of society. Each chapter is titled to match the participant in an upcoming talent show – The Singer, The Glamorous Assistant, The Irish Dancer, The Drag Queen being a few. We get an insight into their reasons why and what winning the coveted £10,000 prize money would mean to them. Set in Belfast the impact of its history is evident as all these stories converge in a more contemporary space and time.
With imaginative and playful stories, I Hear You is a vibrant coming together of people and place, an engaging collection touching on the inner lives of many characters and their emotional complexities.
Thank you to Salt Publishing for a copy of I Hear You in return for my honest review
[ Bio ]
Born in Belfast, Paul McVeigh’s work has been performed on stage and radio, published in print and translated into seven languages. He began his career as a playwright before moving to London where he wrote comedy shows, which were performed at the Edinburgh Festival and in London’s West End.
Moving into prose, his short stories have been published in anthologies & literary journals been read on BBC Radio 3, 4 & 5. ‘Hollow’ was shortlisted for Irish Short Story of the Year at the Irish Book Awards in 2017. Paul co-founded the London Short Story Festival, of which, he was Director and Curator for 2014 & ’15. He is associate director at Word Factory, ‘the UK’s national organisation for excellence in the short story’ The Guardian.
Such an enjoyable collection!
That it is! My first time reading his work also.