The Anchor Book of New Irish Writing

Eschewing the usual norm for anthologies, which generally go for a canonical summation of a literature or a genre, Somer, a professor in Kansas, and Ireland-based editor Daly freeze-frame the changing literary scene in Ireland in this collection of 23 stories and a novella. Somer and Daly have also loosely but cleverly structured this volume to reflect the different directions being taken by Irish writers young and old. Boldly, they begin with ""Summer Night"" by Elizabeth Bowen, who died in 1973, a finely polished tale about marital troubles and familial deceit in which Bowen asks for ""new forms of thinking and feeling."" It is an ideal way to start a book that displays the efforts of later Irish writers to find these new forms. The endeavors range from the early stirring magicalism of John Banville, through the closely observed domesticities of Maeve Binchy, to sundry unsuccessful efforts by the likes of lesser-knowns (Evelyn Conlon, Emma Donahue) in a section titled ""Telling"" (although Patrick McCable's ""The Hands of Dingo Deery"" succeeds mightily). Another section, ""Persona,"" introduces some forms of which Bowen might have approved--Eamonn Sweeney's circular tale, ""Lord McDonald,"" and ilis Ni Dhuibhne's Carveresque ""The Garden of Eden."" Colum McCann stakes out his own section named after his famous story, ""Fishing the Sloe-Black River,"" in which his gift for deep imagery is in full force. ""Cathal's Lake"" tells of a man who keeps count of the lives lost to the sectarian struggles by diligently unearthing swans inexplicably entombed in the sand around his lake and setting the bird free to emblematic life upon the lake's surface at news of each death. The last entry is writer/filmmaker Neil Jordan's novella ""The Dream of a Beast,"" which impressionistically renders subliminal images denuded of any rational or realistic context. Like Joyce's Ulysses, which 80 years ago offered myriad stylistic directions in which a literature might travel, this collection maps where many of the travelers are at this very moment. (Mar.)