Smorgasbord Cafe and Bookstore – New Author on the Shelves – #ShortStories – #Ireland – We All Die in the End: Scenes from a Small Town by Elizabeth Merry

A welcome to the Cafe and Bookstore to Irish author Elizabeth Merry with her recently released collection of short stories – We All Die in the End: Scenes from a Small Town.

About the collection

This is a diverse collection of interlinked stories set in a small, seaside town in Ireland. Some of them verge on the macabre; others deal with abusive relationships and many of them are grim. But there is humour here too – although it is dark humour:

“SADIE said nothing. She trimmed the fat off the kidneys and the liver, her fingers curling away from the soft, red slither and she held her breath against the faint smell of blood.”

“So, I watched Lydia and waited for some bloody nuisance of a child to come screeching after her but no child came. Well, that didn’t make any sense but then Lydia stopped and I saw her speak to the doll. Oho, ARTHUR, I said to myself and I threw down the cigarette. Oho, I said, what’s this? What have we here?”

“ANDY felt the unhappiness grow in his chest again. It was heavy and he fought against it. No, he said to himself. No. He held his arms up and out in front of him and made soft, crooning, engine noises.”

“ROSEMARY always made Dominic wait outside the door until she was in the bed. He could feel the slackness in her thighs and arms; he didn’t have to look at it as well. ‘Come in,’ she called when she was ready. Dominic bounced into the room half-undressed and dropped his shoes. ‘Wait now,’ he said, and brought in a bottle of red wine and two glasses.”

This is just a flavour of the great characters who people this small town, where everyone knows their neighbours, and everyone else!

One of the recent reviews for the book: Sammi Cox WordPress

Jul 03, 2020 Sammi rated it Five Stars

Perfect summer reading if you enjoy real-life styled tales, some light, some dark, all compelling, evocative and well-written. A fantastic read. 5 / 5

I really enjoyed reading this collection of nineteen interconnected short stories. I loved how a mention of one character in one story sets up another story, in a very loose, roundabout sort of way as the stories themselves are all separate. It gave great fluidity to the book, and once I started reading I found it very difficult to stop. The stories were compelling and addictive, and the characters so well-devised that I found myself gripped, wondering where the next story was going to go. The connections between the characters come in the form of family ties, friends, neighbours and work colleagues, giving a cross-section of the population of a small Irish coastal town.

A wide variety of topics and themes are covered: infidelity, the struggles of young parents, crime, mental health issues, religion and spiritualism, dreams and first kisses, sadness, manipulation, regret, guilt, love, fear…There’s a little bit of violence in a handful of the stories, and adult themes and bad language gets a mention a few times as well, but there is nothing graphic and it’s not overused. It adds to the stories rather than detracts from them, and I think it is always worth pointing that out.

As I’ve already said, all the characters have depth and authenticity. It doesn’t take long for the author to present the reader with fully-fleshed people, and it is the thoughts and emotions of these people that bring these stories to life. The author has a great grasp of people and captures wonderfully the two faces of an individual – the one they show to the world and their real self. And it is the secret side of themselves, what they think, what goes on in their homes once their doors are locked and curtains closed that ensure the reader keeps reading. Not everyone we meet is likeable, not everyone we meet is nice. There are characters with ugly personalities and brutal ways, but there are others just trying to make it through the day or realise their dreams.

The descriptions of the town, especially down by the sea (the beach, the pier, the harbour) and the pub, are so clear and evocative that I could easily imagine them as I worked my way through each story. Indeed, the whole town felt very real, I could picture the different houses and flats, and the different rooms within each, quite clearly.

The tension of some of the situations some of the characters find themselves in is palpable, and some of the twists that unfurl aren’t predictable but make perfect sense for the characters they happen to. In essence, these stories are about people; they’re not real, but they could very easily be, and they serve to remind us, we don’t really know other people as well as we sometimes think. A fantastic read.

Read the reviews and buy the book: Amazon US

And: Amazon UK

And more reviews on Goodreads: Goodreads

About Elizabeth Merry

Elizabeth Merry was born in Bangor, Co Down on the north east coast of Ireland but has lived most of her adult life in Dublin. She began writing many years ago, mostly short stories for children, and then a novel for children which was published but is out of print now. She is considering re-publishing it herself on Amazon but will do some re-writing first. She has just published a collection of interlinked stories on Amazon Kindle and is currently working on a poetry collection.

Here is a short list of publications:

Stories for children were published in the National Press in Dublin.

A play for children was broadcast on RTE Radio 1 in Dublin.
A novel for children – The Silver Tea-Set – was published
by Glendale Press, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin (no longer in business).
Several poems and short stories have been published in various literary magazines.

Elizabeth is now an Indie Author and recently published “We All Die in the End” on Amazon Kindle, available on both sides of the Atlantic. This book is an interlinked collection of short stories full of eccentric characters and dark humour.

Connect to Elizabeth

Author Page: Amazon US – And: Amazon UK
Blog: Embookstuff WordPress
Twitter: @ElizabethMerry1

Thanks for dropping in today and it would be great if you could spread the news of Elizabeth’s new release. Thanks Sally.