Bernard MacLaverty

This newly updated and expanded paperback edition of the first monograph in English on Northern Irelandborn Bernard MacLaverty discusses his fiction in its aesthetic, cultural, religious, and political contexts. Richard Rankin Russell emphasizes MacLavertys dialectic of imprisonment versus freedom, the latter represented by love. Love in the earlier fiction is often perverted, whether in the name of family or Irish nationalism, but after the publication of the novel Cal (1983), its manifestations become more positive and characters are able to escape various forms of imprisonment. Russell identifies three distinct phases of MacLavertys careerthe visual, the sonic, and a blending of the twoand concludes by showing how MacLavertys style, humor, and values enable his deeply humane fiction to model human community. Attentive to language and theoretically well informed, each chapter of this enterprising book analyzes a particular short story collection or novel, and also explores the salient features of MacLavertys fiction generally. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.