The Man Who Dreamt of Lobsters: Stories

In this first story collection, Collins, Irish-born and distantly related to the Irish revolutionary who is his namesake, charts out new territory for the discussion of age-old problems. His perspective on life in Ireland is that of disaffected youth who are tired of political strife, the romanticization of bankrupt ways and the abdication of the fathers, who have left the children no legacy but violence and an oppressive church. In ``First Love,'' kids left in a car in a pub parking lot are horrified as their fathers' dogs tear at the dead rabbits that have been bagged earlier in the day, the fathers oblivious over their pints. In ``The Butcher's Daughter'' a pregnant young woman sits in a pub with a doll in a pram as the place fills with soldiers, the workings of a violent cataclysm ticking away in the doll's belly. And in ``The Whore Mother,'' Collins crafts a tale that is both quintessentially Irish (a brewery worker drowns in a vat of Guinness) and wickedly subversive (his impoverished widow, who in the absence of decent death benefits has taken up prostitution, is meted out the most terrible kind of justice). Collins's gift is his ability to find intricate metaphors to describe lives so grim that only anger lights the way. (Mar . )