“The edge of the forest marks the beginning of our story,” this declaration opens Mary Costello’s new compilation, Barcelona, a line borrowed from Kafka’s A Report to an Academy. In Kafka’s tale, an abducted ape gains human conduct to pave a path to freedom, an apt prologue for Costello who is engrossed in the universal themes of liberty, obligation, dominance, disparity, and ordeal. Her book explores characters searching for escape routes from stagnated love, insipid middle years, unfaithful spouses, and haunting histories, whilst displaying compassion for their adversities and acknowledging their losses.
In a similar vein to Kafka, Costello’s narrative extends beyond the realms of human experience, displaying a unique bond and understanding for the animal kingdom. Costello employs the power of the shortened written form to express the unheard stories of the voiceless, giving them a platform. This collection is bound to leave a mark on those considering vegetarianism and may provoke contemplation in others. Key to Costello’s work is her skill to expose harsh realities and request her reader to face them without flinching.
The final mournful narrative, The Killing Line, paints life-changing experiences of a young lad who comes across a slaughterhouse, depicting a grisly image of severed hooves. Similarly, the heart-rendering title story, Barcelona, pictures a woman attempting to salvage her decaying marriage during a city break, only to be repulsed witnessing her husband consume quail, leaving her consumed by a profound solitude.
Costello adds layers of emotion and makes her readers rethink their standpoints through her storytelling, making her work an unforgettable read.
In the narrative titled “At the Gate”, there is a story of a mismatched duo on a journey to witness JM Coetzee’s attendance at a Kerry Literary festival. Their journey takes an interesting turn when the narrator notices a butcher’s van parked close to a grocery store, prompting a deep rooted reflection on animal lives. This eventually makes way for a discourse on Coetzee’s ‘Elizabeth Costello’, part of the numerous meta-literary hues throughout the series. The anthology references an assembly of renowned authors including Kafka, Borges, Joyce, Cheever, Robert Musil, Robert Walser, Joseph Roth and Chekhov, with female representation coming from Virginia Woolf and surprisingly Sophie Ellis-Baxter who subtly appears in the least profound tale of the collection, ‘Groovejet’.
As a whole, the assembled narratives are robust and leave a lasting memory, delving deep into the hardships carried by individuals, often to the detriment of their happiness. Costello’s detailed prose and her effortless imparting of her wisdom echoes other esteemed authors like Elizabeth Strout, and local talents such as Trevor and Lavin. ‘Barcelona’ is the second set of short stories from her, following her first release ‘The China Factory’ in 2012, published by The Stinging Fly, which was nominated for both the Guardian First Book Award and an Irish Book Award. Her very first novel, ‘Academy Street’ in 2014, was declared the Novel of the Year by the Irish Book Awards and was a nominee for the International Dublin Literary Award. Her latest work, ‘The River Capture’ in 2019, was a nominee for the Irish Book Awards, the Dalkey Novel Prize and the Kerry Novel of the Year.
Costello displays a deep and instinctive comprehension of sorrow, which she masterfully employs as the backbone of her short stories. Throughout her works, one can frequently observe brief tales that glimpses into different likes of heartbreak. One such sub-story involves a kin who was murdered in the War of Independence, hastily interred by his comrades; a later disinterment revealed scratch marks under his coffin lid. Another narrative recounts the unfortunate end of a girl aged 12, killed by a sliotar strike. In a separate notable story, The Choc-Ice Woman, seen first in the New Yorker the previous year, the storyteller Frances gives a poignant account of her spouse’s calamitous past while grappling with his unfaithfulness. There’s a scene where she sits in a tiny park behind the library during midday meal break overwhelmed with distress: “The world contracted until all that remained was the distressing shiver of the birch leaves overhead”.
Barcelona embraces a range of themes but offers a refreshing diversity of viewpoints, rhythm, and age group, indicated by a variety of gender and tense. A proclivity to ponder and scrutinize that which most people would rather overlook, connects these distinct narrators. Costello, with her consistent elegance in writing, knows when to indulge and when to moderate. As one of her characters, the grieving Oliver notes in their final beautiful tale about mourning, love and heritage, “I didn’t say anything, but somehow, he knew. These things are conveyed in ways we can’t fathom”.