The Dogs of Inishere: A collection of the best of Alannah Hopkins’ stories from the past thirty years of her career as a fiction and travel writer. Available from: Dalkey Press Dublin

The stories presented here move from adolescence to middle age, sensitive always to the particular social, emotional and intellectual challenges of the different phases of a life. An adolescent girl bristles against the gendered assumptions and expectations of mid-sixties London. A young writer struggles to commit fully to the artist’s life. A group of pub regulars in a sleepy seaside town observe the quiet disappointments of love and marriage. Along the way, Hopkins’ protagonists, often writers themselves, wrestle with the influence of literary figures from the past, including Austen, Byron, Poe, Wilde, Lowry and B.S. Johnson.

Read reviews of The Dogs of Inishere:
“A cast of eccentrics and outsiders populates a collection set largely in coastal Ireland.” Kirkus Reviews
“Clean, clear, sharp, savage – absolutely bloody brilliant” Carlo Gébler
“What links these deceptively artless stories is the hint of unsettling possibilities.” Eibhear Walsh, Irish Times, 27 May, 2017.

“It’s the kind of ending where you’re not sure if you should laugh or be appalled.” Lucas Spiro, The Artsfuse, Boston.

“In Alannah Hopkin’s stories things are never quite what they seem – masks slip, motives are ambiguous, relationships prove to be illusory or even downright fatal. She lures you into familiar settings then dislocates your sensibility in subtle, magical and poignant ways. A brilliant collection.” James Harpur