The Portable Virgin
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Review
"As cool and clear-headed as the moment a migraine lifts, these pained, precise, disquieting stories restore to us the strangeness of the lives we follow beneath the surface of the lives we lead... A remarkable debut." -- Aidan Matthews
"Elegant, scrupulously poised, always intelligent and, not least, original." -- Angela Carter
"Elegant, scrupulously poised, always intelligent and, not least, original." -- Angela Carter
Today
'Witty and acerbic…unusual and elegant. She is a writer to watch’
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
well, I bought this book after reading The Gathering but I am a bit disappointed as it is just a collection of short histories and they are a bit weir, not really making sense. But then what does?
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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2 reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
No relation
14 Nov 2000
Format:Paperback
Even though the author of this collection has almost the same name as my my mother, she's not related to me, at least not that I know of. I'd love if she was, because it's great to have a genius in the family, and she shows signs of being one with these beatifully weighted stories. There's a purity about them that sets them apart from the experimentalism and Ultra-naturalism that seem to dominate the form these days, a characteristically Irish love of language, and a simultaneous feeling for and detatchment from her characters that is really endearing. She reminds me more than anything else of Vermeer's portrait of a young girl, which seems to capture a fleeting moment that reveals so much about both the artist and their subject.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Every Sentence Crackles
10 April 2002
Format:Paperback
A Dublin bookshop offered this gem up to me when I was visiting Ireland in the early 90's, and probably a year has not gone by since 1991 when I haven't reread The Portable Virgin. It's smart, edgy, and hysterically funny. It's also an entirely original take on what contemporary Irish consciousness is like. Every friend to whom I've lent my dog-eared copy threatens to steal the book from me. Sadly, it's out of print, but an American publisher would be wise to print up another 50,000 copies.
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