2021-03-02
54 分钟Douglas Stuart joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “Fjord of Killary,” by Kevin Barry, which appeared in a 2010 issue of the magazine. Stuart’s first novel, “Shuggie Bain,” won the Booker Prize in 2020.
This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from the New Yorker magazine.
I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker.
Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.
This month we're going to hear fjord of killery by Kevin Barry, which was published in the New Yorker in February of 2010.
It was by now a hysterical downpour with great sheets of water streaming down from wool Rhea and the harbour roared in the fattening light.
Visibility was reduced to 14ft.
This all signaled that the west of Ireland holiday season had begun.
The story was chosen by Douglas Stewart, whose first novel, Shuggie Bain, won the Booker Prize in 2020.
Hi, Douglas.
Hi, Debra.
How are you?
I'm all right.
Welcome.
When we talked about doing this, you had originally been inclined to choose a scottish story to read on the podcast, but in the end, you settled on an irish one.
Do you think the two traditions are interlocked?
They certainly have a very close relationship, but even in reading the Kevin Barry story, I realized how much of the pronunciation and the expressions weren't familiar to my ear.
And so although they're close, they are.
Quite different in terms of this story.
It feels a little like a fairy tale in a sense, and it has that sort of fable like quality to it.
And I feel as though it may work in a tradition of irish fables.