Everybody's Irish

by Ian Stansel

Genres: Short Stories

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Ian Stansel is the author of the novel The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo and the short story collection Everybody's Irish, a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction.

Ian holds an MFA in fiction writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston, where from 2010 to 2012 he served as the editor of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts.

His fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Ploughshares, Ecotone, Cincinnati Review, Memorious, Antioch Review, and others. His stories have been selected for inclusion in the 2012 and 2013 editions of the New Stories of the Midwest anthology series and shortlisted for Best American Short Stories.

His nonfiction writing has appeared on Salon and The Good Men Project, and he contributes monthly posts on a variety of literary subjects to the blog at Ploughshares.

Born in Chicago, and raised there and in northern California, he currently lives in Louisville with his wife, writer Sarah Anne Strickley, and their two daughters. He teaches creative writing at the University of Louisville.

He can be contacted at istansel [at] gmail [dot] com.

Reviews

[Lee Klein]

You know that scene in "North by Northwest" -- Cary Grant confronts the terrifying open space of fields occupied only by an approaching crop duster -- that's what these characters face, sort of, but they do so in crap apartments, in rotten bungalows, in bars, and in one case while bicycling across Illinois while a modern cropduster buzzes nearby. These are solid, well-constructed, carefully crafted stories of the type I would call "classic." Set mostly in Chicago and the infinite cornfields surrounding it, temporally (other than the title story set on St. Patrick's Day, 2011, during the Occupy Movement) they're set in 1967, 1986, before the technological revolution, before cell phones (only one buzzes by my count) and ye olde internet, which adds to the sense that these are classic American stories like those published in the 1980s by Carver, Tobias Woolf, and the Great American Richards (Bausch, Ford, Yates). They fulfill expectations you bring to so-called classic American short stories -- characters come alive after a few pages thanks to plentiful dramatization, there's conflict, restrained dialogue, rising drama, language that's carefully phrased but doesn't call attention to itself, all of it leading to that moment three-quarters through when the story's hard-earned structural solidity gives out and the story seems to squirm as characters experience watershed moments, often involving violence and sex. Adultery, rape, masochism, drugs, drink, suicide, quick covert screwing in kitchens, all sorts of existential spasms expressed physically as characters run from the wild blue yonder of where they've somehow found themselves. A collection filled with megadoses of short-story essence -- heartbreak, horror, hope -- yearning for what's been lost. The Occupy Movement and Pink Floyd's "Money" lightly underscore economic issues suggested herein, but it seems like all characters are down on their luck, out of a job, with dead parents and dead or divorced spouses. But why put yourself through such stuff? Why apply to your face a rectangular device made of paper that ocularly administers yearning to your heart and head? Because there's something about seeing expectations of the traditional story form artfully fulfilled that's simply totally satisfying. We YEARN for solid stories told solidly and, although the characters' desires are for the most part totally dashed (other than a little glimmer of uplift at the end), the reader's yearning is not. It's not as easy as the author (a grad school friend, hence the "potential conflict of interest") makes it seem -- a lot of hard work is required to make these stories seem to effortlessly proceed until they hit those moments where the ground gives out. For a reader, there's nothing like that feeling -- you're cruising along and out of the blue the narrative equivalent of a cropduster appears and legs go watery as you try and fail to stand on the surface of what's suddenly become a bottomless ocean. If you're a fan of that feeling -- that is, if you're a fan of solid stories with built-in vertiginous booby traps -- you've found a favorite new collection. Great stuff.

[Joe]

What an amazingly rewarding collection. The nine stories in Stansel's first book are enough to remind people why they liked serious, classically structured stories in the first place. That's not to say the book lacks surprises--there are plenty of those, too, but they rise from the organic twists and turns of strongly rendered characters which run the gamut from young hippies in the rural Illinois of the '60s to a lonely, forty-something hostel owner in Houston in the present day. All of the main characters are enduring the quiet tumults of everyday life, though some are in more of a jam than others. Stansel uses those opportunities to artfully explore some of our most basic concerns as people--what do we do when we don't have enough money, how does that affect out relationships with others, why do some people fit in and others not, why are some drawn to cities and others to towns. The author's insight into these and others questions are worth the price of admission alone.

[Lisa Haneberg]

Author Ian Stansel offers a collection of stories filled with emotion, drama, and reflection. Very evocative, sometimes disturbing, and always absorbing. Once I began each story, I needed to finish it, impatient when required to pause reading. This edition is no longer in print, but available used and will hopefully be published again in the future.

[Anthony Viola]

Stansel does a fantastic job capturing the lives of common people as they stumble through their mundane existence in search of something better in life. This collection is gritty and well written, engaging the reader with every turn of the page. An amazing debut by a new talent.

[Joe]

A fantastic lot of Midwestern short stories. “Domestique” in particular is close to short form perfection.

[Sue]

It's rare that I enjoy a short story collection cover to cover, but every one of these delivered. The stories feature mid-westerners on the fringes and on the edge - not quite, but almost marginalized, whose good intentions are not quite enough to give them the second chances they're shooting for. Beautiful language, heartbreaking characters and a healthy dose of cynicism in well crafted, traditionally structured stories, reminiscent of Andres Dubus, Richard Russo, Stuart Dybek, and Charles D'Ambrosio.

[Susan]

I am not a big fan of the short story. Except for those by William Trevor and T.C. Boyle, I usually avoid short story collections. And now I have this luminous collection by Ian Stansel to add to my list of wonderful short story writers. This man has quite a gift. I'm a fan. I highly recommend you go right out get yourself a copy of this collection.

[André Habet]

http://bansheeboardwalk.wordpress.com...