In The Middle of The Fields and Other Stories

Mary Lavin

Macmillan Company

Tales from Bective Bridge is a collection of 10 short stories concerning rural Ireland and its populace by the writer, Mary Lavin, born an American, who returned along with her family to Ireland in 1925.The collection was first published in 1942, with the assistance of Lord Dunsany, who also wrote the introduction to the collection when first published. The collection established her as a writer of note, and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1943.The bridge of the title, Bective Bridge, lies not far from what was her home, Abbey Farm, near Bective Abbey, between Bective and Robinstown in Meath.

Tales from Bective Bridge

Literature & Fiction

Short Stories & Anthologies

Poolbeg Press

On an island teeming with masters of the short story, Mary Lavin's distinct voice and devoted following set her apart. Before her death in 1996, this Irish writer had received many honors and prizes not only for her luminous short stories but also for several highly regarded novels. William Trevor praised Lavin's ability to "make moments timeless, to illuminate people and places, words and things, by touching them with the magic of the rarely-gifted storyteller." In a Cafe makes available for the first time in the United States a collection of her most beloved pieces as compiled by her daughter. In masterworks such as the title story, an unsettling portrayal of widowhood, and "The Will," which Lavin considered the finest expression of her art, we recognize the justice in Trevor's declaration that "the short story of today owes her a very great debt."  "I envy the skill of Mary Lavin. . . . In her capacity to make much out of little, to compress an entire ethos into an apparently banal situation, she reminds us what literature is all about."  --Anthony Burgess  "I cannot think of any Irish writer who has gone so profoundly without fear into the Irish heart." --V. S. Pritchett

In a café

Town House

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Books by Mary Lavin