Andy Miller

My love.

Will you come back again?

And then there's a footnote here saying, obviously there's a quote from the Bible, as I've loved you, so you must love one another.

But then, is your heart filled with pain?

Shall I come back again?

Tell me, dear, are you lonesome tonight?

Are you lonesome tonight?

I mean, it's the kind of thing I love.

It's as mad and strange and complex.

You know, often this stuff is written, this strange, weird folk stuff is written by men.

It's not often you get a woman doing it in this vein, in this dark, strange, seething, odd narrative.

It's not a book you can read particularly quickly, but I've gone back to it several... I mean, I've read it over a series of months, and each time I go back to it, I get more out of it, so...

Highly recommended.

Okay, so that's called Or Lam, PJ Harvey, published by Picador, and it's a really beautiful bit of bookmaking as well.

However, since the posthumous publication of The Springs of Affection in 1997, Mae Brennan's reputation has grown steadily and her stories are now regularly and favourably compared to those of Joyce, Chekhov and Corlette.

In Ireland, in particular, she has won the admiration of a new generation of women writers who, in Anne Enright's phrase, see her as a casualty of old wars not yet won.

In 2016, the Irish publisher Stinging Fly published both The Springs of Affection, with an introduction by Anne Wright, and The Long-Winded Lady, a collection of Maeve's New Yorker columns.

And in February, next February, the London-based Indy Peninsula Press have announced they're publishing a new edition of The Springs of Affection, with an introduction by the novelist Claire Louise Bennett.

So the Brennan revival continues with today's podcast, as we've got two writers here who are both passionate admirers of and advocates for Maeve's writing.

Yes.