After a Dance

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What to expect

'These are some of the wildest, arresting, just plain brilliant short stories I've read in a long time.' - Roddy Doyle, author of The Woman Who Walked Into Doors

After a Dance is the compiled collection of short stories from acclaimed writer Bridget O'Connor, with an exclusive preface written and read by the author's daughter, Constance Straughan.

Bridget O'Connor was one of the great short story writers of her generation. She had a voice that was viscerally funny and an eye for both the glaring reality and the absurdity of the everyday.

In After A Dance, we meet a selection of O'Connor's most memorable characters often living on the margin of their own lives: from the anonymous thief set on an unusual prize to the hungover best man clinging to what he's lost, to the unrepentant gold-digger who always comes out on top. From unravelling narcissists to melancholy romantics all human life is here - at its best and at its delightful worst.

Critics Review

To call [these stories] characterful is to undersell these Technicolor prose screams, these screeching narrative sprints, this filthy feast of stories. Think Irvine Welsh meets Edna O’Brien . . . pure, delicious naughty fun.
The Times
These are some of the wildest, arresting, just plain brilliant short stories I've read in a long time.
Roddy Doyle, author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
A storytelling genius before her time
The Irish Times
Wickedly funny, stylishly written, I relished each and every one of these stories
Patrick McCabe, author of The Butcher Boy
Every O’Connor story is a performance, a live fight with time and decay, disgust and the human body. She wrote intensely from her time and place; to read her now is to be catapulted back to 1990s London. Yet the voice, the themes are more relevant than ever. No wonder she was so preoccupied with temporality: she was before her time.
The Irish Times
'[Bridget O'Connor] was an incredible short story writer . . . hilarious, tragic, shuddering
The Times
'Mostly brief, sometimes brutal, always funny . . . a master of the [short story]. The results are both vivacious and vicious. But even at their most painful, they sing
The Herald
Bridget O'Connor creates unforgettable voices . . . Sad, funny, disturbing, the tales in After a Dance are odd, and oddly luminous
Times Literary Supplement
These stories have more electricity in them than many novels
Guardian
In this new collection her most accomplished and most devastating stories lie side by side. O’Connor writes of everyday characters so pitiful they are ridiculous, so awful they become lovable . . . The language is unexpected and the twists are often absurd. Reading O’Connor is always a delight
New Statesman

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