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This Train is For
Bernie McGill’s award-winning stories have been widely praised for their emotional depth and lyrical language.
She is a writer of profound sensitivity and observation whose masterful deployment of linguistic precision and economy enables her to plumb the depths of human experience while neatly avoiding sentimentalism.
This new collection, the first since 2013, contains unpublished stories along with a number of previously published stories contained within award winning anthologies.
She is a writer of profound sensitivity and observation whose masterful deployment of linguistic precision and economy enables her to plumb the depths of human experience while neatly avoiding sentimentalism.
This new collection, the first since 2013, contains unpublished stories along with a number of previously published stories contained within award winning anthologies.
- GenresShort Stories
171 pages, Paperback
Published June 1, 2022
1 person is currently reading
28 people want to read
About the author
Bernie Mcgill
11 books70 followersBernie McGill lives in Portstewart in Northern Ireland. She is the author of two novels: The Butterfly Cabinet and The Watch House, which was shortlisted in 2019 for the Irish/European Union Prize for Literature. Her work has been translated into Dutch (Charlotte’s vleugels) and into Italian (La donna che collezionava farfalle and Le parole nell’aria).
Her latest publication is This Train is For, a collection of short stories published by No Alibis Press, Belfast (June 2022). Sleepwalkers, Bernie's first collection of short stories, was published in May 2013 by Whittrick Press and shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2014. The title story was first prizewinner in the Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest (US) and the collection includes 'Home', a supplementary prizewinner in the 2010 Bridport Short Story Prize and 'No Angel', Second Prizewinner in the Seán Ó Faoláin and the Michael McLaverty Short Story Prizes. Her work has been anthologised in Belfast Stories, Reading the Future and in the award-winning The Long Gaze Back, The Glass Shore, and in Female Lines. She is the recipient of a number of Arts Council Awards as well as a Research Award from the Society of Authors. She is a former Writing Fellow with the Royal Literary Fund at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University, Belfast.
Reviews
‘McGill writes about life, love and telegraphy with a poet’s clarity’ Sunday Times
‘Totally absorbing and full of unexpected twists’ Sunday Business Post
‘A lyrical, wonderfully atmospheric novel’ Sunday Express
‘McGill proves once again she is a masterful storyteller . . . historical fiction at its absolute best’ The Lady
‘The Watch House, set on Rathlin Island at the turn of the 20th century, [is] awash in old rituals and impending transformations, in loyalties and enmities and all manner of local witchery.’ Patricia Craig in the Irish Times Books of the Year.
‘Hard to put down, this atmospheric book will stay with you long after the final heart-rending denouement, setting McGill firmly into the panoply of modern Irish writers’ Irish Independent
'McGill has the ability to enter into the brain and heart of her characters.' (Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey writing in The Guardian
Her latest publication is This Train is For, a collection of short stories published by No Alibis Press, Belfast (June 2022). Sleepwalkers, Bernie's first collection of short stories, was published in May 2013 by Whittrick Press and shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2014. The title story was first prizewinner in the Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest (US) and the collection includes 'Home', a supplementary prizewinner in the 2010 Bridport Short Story Prize and 'No Angel', Second Prizewinner in the Seán Ó Faoláin and the Michael McLaverty Short Story Prizes. Her work has been anthologised in Belfast Stories, Reading the Future and in the award-winning The Long Gaze Back, The Glass Shore, and in Female Lines. She is the recipient of a number of Arts Council Awards as well as a Research Award from the Society of Authors. She is a former Writing Fellow with the Royal Literary Fund at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University, Belfast.
Reviews
‘McGill writes about life, love and telegraphy with a poet’s clarity’ Sunday Times
‘Totally absorbing and full of unexpected twists’ Sunday Business Post
‘A lyrical, wonderfully atmospheric novel’ Sunday Express
‘McGill proves once again she is a masterful storyteller . . . historical fiction at its absolute best’ The Lady
‘The Watch House, set on Rathlin Island at the turn of the 20th century, [is] awash in old rituals and impending transformations, in loyalties and enmities and all manner of local witchery.’ Patricia Craig in the Irish Times Books of the Year.
‘Hard to put down, this atmospheric book will stay with you long after the final heart-rending denouement, setting McGill firmly into the panoply of modern Irish writers’ Irish Independent
'McGill has the ability to enter into the brain and heart of her characters.' (Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey writing in The Guardian
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 17, 2023
This collection of Irish short stories was so beautifully written and sad and impactful - I loved it. Thank you Christie!!
May 9, 2024
Regular readers of this blog will be aware of my fondness for Irish writing from both sides of the border, the kind of quiet, understated fiction that William Trevor, Claire Keegan, Lucy Caldwell and Maeve Brennan have produced. Now I can add Derry’s Bernie McGill to my list of favourites, courtesy of this excellent collection of short stories, which scooped the Edge Hill Short Story Prize earlier this year.
Here we have stories infused with loss, where the past disrupts the present, foregrounding the fallout from longstanding trauma, disagreements and secrets we try to conceal. Interestingly, virtually all the standout stories here involve travel, reconnecting the protagonists with their families and troubling events from the past. Nevertheless, it’s the emotional journeys McGill’s characters undertake that give these pieces their humanity and depth.
In the titular story, one of my favourites from the collection, an elderly man travels by train to see his estranged sister, who is nearing the end of her life. As the landscape slips by outside – a sequence of urban and rural scenes, each with a vivid sense of place – we learn the source of their longstanding estrangement, a bitter disagreement rooted in prejudice and political divides.
This is what we do here: move forward while facing back, keeping a sharp eye on what has been, in case it gets a run on us, overtakes on our blind side. (p. 1)
A sibling reunion of sorts also features in ‘There is More Than One Word’ as a middle-aged woman, Jaynie, returns to Belfast to deal with the discovery of the remains of a man – possibly her brother, Paul, who went missing aged seventeen.
She has told the principal at her current school that her brother has died, that she needed leave to come home for the funeral. She hasn’t told him that between these two events is a gap of forty-seven years; that she isn’t certain there will be a burial; that she hopes there will, but that she couldn’t say for sure. It was too complicated to get into. (p. 24)
In this powerful story, Jaynie is haunted by the fear of the unknown, which manifests itself in a recurring, looping vision – the sense of a body being bundled into a car, a kidnapping or ambush, perhaps? Shadowy images that refuse to sharpen into focus before the sequence begins again.
Language plays a crucial part in both of these pieces. What did Paul do back then? What did he say (or not say) to antagonise his aggressors? What unspoken rules or codes were broken? With piercing insight, McGill suggests there can be no easy release from past traumas; instead, they continue to reverberate, taunting and unnerving us till the end of our days.
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2024...
Here we have stories infused with loss, where the past disrupts the present, foregrounding the fallout from longstanding trauma, disagreements and secrets we try to conceal. Interestingly, virtually all the standout stories here involve travel, reconnecting the protagonists with their families and troubling events from the past. Nevertheless, it’s the emotional journeys McGill’s characters undertake that give these pieces their humanity and depth.
In the titular story, one of my favourites from the collection, an elderly man travels by train to see his estranged sister, who is nearing the end of her life. As the landscape slips by outside – a sequence of urban and rural scenes, each with a vivid sense of place – we learn the source of their longstanding estrangement, a bitter disagreement rooted in prejudice and political divides.
This is what we do here: move forward while facing back, keeping a sharp eye on what has been, in case it gets a run on us, overtakes on our blind side. (p. 1)
A sibling reunion of sorts also features in ‘There is More Than One Word’ as a middle-aged woman, Jaynie, returns to Belfast to deal with the discovery of the remains of a man – possibly her brother, Paul, who went missing aged seventeen.
She has told the principal at her current school that her brother has died, that she needed leave to come home for the funeral. She hasn’t told him that between these two events is a gap of forty-seven years; that she isn’t certain there will be a burial; that she hopes there will, but that she couldn’t say for sure. It was too complicated to get into. (p. 24)
In this powerful story, Jaynie is haunted by the fear of the unknown, which manifests itself in a recurring, looping vision – the sense of a body being bundled into a car, a kidnapping or ambush, perhaps? Shadowy images that refuse to sharpen into focus before the sequence begins again.
Language plays a crucial part in both of these pieces. What did Paul do back then? What did he say (or not say) to antagonise his aggressors? What unspoken rules or codes were broken? With piercing insight, McGill suggests there can be no easy release from past traumas; instead, they continue to reverberate, taunting and unnerving us till the end of our days.
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2024...
April 10, 2025
This train is for by Bernie McGill is a collection of short stories which opens with the title story.
This train is for is a beautifully written story of a brother travelling to see his dying sister. The priest had telephoned telling him to come as his sister, Lizzie, was near the end and wanted to see him.
He is recalling the past as he travels through Ireland. As the stations come and go they are named as if to keep them for posterity whilst he recalls childhood antics with Lizzie, going to grammar school, his mother, the rift that came, the last conversation, Helens reaction to those harsh words that he had repeated to her. It had been sixty years since he had left a young man with his bride.
It was curiosity that led him to go in the end. Would he regret it? Had he already had enough regret? Was it important to remember? Perhaps, but the troubles that brought sixty years of rift between him and his mother and sister had never been important to him or rather he hadn’t understood why love could not overcome the hatred but now they mattered less for this journey had returned something precious to him.
The stories
This train is for | There is More than One Word | A Loss | The Snagging List | The Escapologist | Glass Girl | A Fuss | The House of the Quartered Door | The Cure for Too Much Feeling | Nomad | Star Gazers | In the Interests of Wonder
There are twelve stories in this collection, as listed above, and each is a gem. Stories about human nature, connectivity, about life and they are each a beautifully crafted piece that sit in the mind lingering long after they have been read. This is a stunning collection of short stories. Bernie McGill is an author whose work I will seek out and which I would not hesitate to recommend as, in my opinion, she should be read as widely as possible by all who love beautiful writing and enjoy reading wonderful stories.
Janet - LoveBooks, ReadBooks logo
Previously read: Waiting for Joseph | Listen to Bernie’s short story ‘Waiting for Joseph’ read by Julia Dearden on BBC Radio 4.
Book: Purchased
This train is for is a beautifully written story of a brother travelling to see his dying sister. The priest had telephoned telling him to come as his sister, Lizzie, was near the end and wanted to see him.
He is recalling the past as he travels through Ireland. As the stations come and go they are named as if to keep them for posterity whilst he recalls childhood antics with Lizzie, going to grammar school, his mother, the rift that came, the last conversation, Helens reaction to those harsh words that he had repeated to her. It had been sixty years since he had left a young man with his bride.
It was curiosity that led him to go in the end. Would he regret it? Had he already had enough regret? Was it important to remember? Perhaps, but the troubles that brought sixty years of rift between him and his mother and sister had never been important to him or rather he hadn’t understood why love could not overcome the hatred but now they mattered less for this journey had returned something precious to him.
The stories
This train is for | There is More than One Word | A Loss | The Snagging List | The Escapologist | Glass Girl | A Fuss | The House of the Quartered Door | The Cure for Too Much Feeling | Nomad | Star Gazers | In the Interests of Wonder
There are twelve stories in this collection, as listed above, and each is a gem. Stories about human nature, connectivity, about life and they are each a beautifully crafted piece that sit in the mind lingering long after they have been read. This is a stunning collection of short stories. Bernie McGill is an author whose work I will seek out and which I would not hesitate to recommend as, in my opinion, she should be read as widely as possible by all who love beautiful writing and enjoy reading wonderful stories.
Janet - LoveBooks, ReadBooks logo
Previously read: Waiting for Joseph | Listen to Bernie’s short story ‘Waiting for Joseph’ read by Julia Dearden on BBC Radio 4.
Book: Purchased
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews