Voyovic and Other Stories by Niall Quinn

Voyovic was Mr. Quinn's first publication of fiction. It is a collection, a melange, a tableau of grit and beauty-a promising poetry of the street, of poverty, of the belly of Europe, of Life. The various stories are tests of courage and love. More, they are triumphs over, and capitulations to, friendship, frustration and dilemma. Many of these stories are set in Europe, their players uprooted guestworkers, who, strangers in their own homelands after years of exile, crave picket fences and children as they muse in their separate stupors. The reader of Mr Quinn is drawn into these dreams, touched by them. Mr Quinn's power is not just his power of showing how impossible these dreams are. Rather it is showing that his characters simply do not want them, but can only thrive in quiet, hopeless alienation and desperate friendship, perhaps the only illusion in life that is real. Each of these stories is a gem, some rougher than others in texture, but all pure in execution and style. Each stands alone, but works better as a pebble on Mr Quinn's beach. Beckett himself would know this grey forgotten distant shore. Quinn is canny, gritty and a master craftsman. (This review by Dr. Jeff Conine)