Brawler by Lauren Groff (Hutchinson Heinemann £18.99, 288pp)
Groff’s latest collection crisscrosses America from the 1950s to the present day in nine stories about troubled mothers, damaged daughters, ruined siblings and marriages that look like they’re heading for the rocks.
The opening story, The Wind, is an emotional gut-punch as a woman attempts to escape her violent cop husband.
The moving Brawler sees diver Sara ready to fight the world as she copes with her neurotic, ill mother, while the slow poison of privilege infects the lives of alcoholic, unpredictable Chip and his protective sister in the compelling What’s The Time, Mr. Wolf?
An Arrow In Flight by Mary Lavin (Vintage Classics £18.99, 416pp)
Dublin and rural Meath are the setting for most of Lavin’s excellent short stories and it’s against the backdrop of city streets and rural fields that her nervy, emotionally contrary characters do their best to find a sense of equilibrium.
Sympathetic, but unsentimental, she fearlessly delves into the hearts of widows, and the quiet upheavals of their lives, charting their wayward thoughts and vagaries of feelings, as seen in Happiness and In The Middle Of The Fields, or complex family dynamics in A Cup Of Tea as a returning student is caught in the mire of her parents’ relationship.
Banshee, Edited by Ailbhe Malone (John Murray £22, 320pp)
Bold, beautiful and bleak, these powerful reimaginings of ancient Irish myths and old folktales put women at the centre of stories that focused on male protagonists.
Ten writers, including Megan Nolan, Jess Kidd and Salma El-Wardany, take these mysterious legends of goddesses, imprisoned princesses and mermaids and transform them into stories with contemporary resonance.
Naoise Dolan’s The Swan reimagines The Children Of Lir with actors as birds starring in a neverending performance.
Jane Casey’s The Changeling is a clever take on a toxic relationship and the revenge that a woman takes on her abusive partner.
And the wonderful Wendy Erskine conjures up a hexed family on a rundown housing estate, marred by terrible ill fortune, in a reimagining of The Labour Pains Of The Ulaid.
