Old Romantics

Shortlisted for the Kate O'Brien Award Shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Sunday Independent Newcomer of the YearLike Dubliners, if Dubliners were Cat Person as a feminist mock-epic about a writer's coming of ageand every Dubliner was named Margaret.A woman pursues the man who cut ahead of her in line. Two nice people report that a child has been left unsupervised at a local beach. Romances, old and new, shift and sour. Following Maggie Armstrongs intrepid hero, Margaret, through first love, first bad date, first job, first extremely bad date, and on into midlife and its attendant disillusionment and revelations, Old Romantics is an acutely observed and hideously entertaining collection of linked short stories from an astonishing new talent. Endearingly flawed and perilously honest, Armstrongs characters navigate a world of awkward expectation and latent hostility with piercing insight and indelible wit.