A Homage to Keane's Style of Folklore Storytelling
THE TEAPOTS ARE OUT and Other Eccentric Tales from Ireland
by John B. Keane
Carroll & Graf Publishers
ISBN 0-7867-1298-8
Reviewed by Sharon Greer
One of Ireland's favourite storytellers for many years, John B. Keane's last collection of short stories, The Teapots are Out and other Eccentric Tales from Ireland, is an appropriate homage to the late author’s style of folklore storytelling.
This compilation of 17 short stories stretches across a broad spectrum of humanity. Keane’s incisive eye for the foibles of Irish country folk, clearly views them with compassion and humour.
The tragic tale, The Hanging, shows how vicious gossip and innuendo can quickly destroy someone’s life. Under the Sycamore Tree begins as a story of quiet desperation but ends up on an unlikely note of hope. An innocent game of graveyard hurling ends up as a eerie ghost story in You’re On Next Sunday.
When Keane died over three years ago, The New York Times ran a long obituary chronicling him as the “Irish writer who recorded the voice of a disappearing generation from his pub in County Kerry.....While Mr. Keane embraced the power of myth and the irrational, he explored the complicated psychology of the Irish countryside through straightforward tales.”
John B. Keane was an Irish playwright, poet and publican. He was born in 1928 in Listowel, County Kerry and died there in May of 2002. He is probably best known for his play, The Field, which was adapted in 1990 by Irish director, Jim Sheridan, as a film featuring Richard Harris and John Hurt. He published 46 works and presided over one of the liveliest, most literary pubs in Ireland.
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