Sinéad Gleeson

Or, you know, a New York that's long gone.

A New York that, as she was writing herself, was falling down and changing all the time when she was living there.

It doesn't matter.

The prose and the ideas and the themes are completely timeless.

Another person who was a friend of hers and admired was Edward Albee, the playwright, who dedicated a play to her.

But also he said it's only right to mention her in the company of Chekhov and Flaubert.

I mean, again, I think it's very key that she wasn't compared to, you know, to Somerville and Ross or to Irish writers who came before her.

She was compared to the greats, international greats.

And I think that's right.

All men, interestingly, as well.

They're so poisonous, those stories.

I actually, particularly Rose's story, I think when Rose appears in these handful of stories, I think Brennan tells us enough about her.

There's a novel's worth.

I feel I've got a novel about Rose's life out of reading those handful of stories.

And I think it's that sort of these eddies that she goes around in over and over again.

Even the, you know, the Durden's, they're kind of almost the horribleness, the horror they have of each other.

There's a moment where I think at one point there's a lot of standing at doors, as David says, where he's standing in a doorway at some point and he said, you know, he just liked her so much he smiled.

And there's so many little toxic, toxic bombs within the stories.

And I think that

By going back all the time and circling and revising, Brennan is making us look, it's that you can't look away.