Colum McCann reads Benedict Kiely's "Bluebell Meadow," and discusses it with The New Yorker's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. "Bluebell Meadow" was published in the April 14, 1975, issue of The New Yorker and can be found in "The Collected Stories of Benedict Kiely." Colum McCann's most recent book is "Let the Great World Spin."
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 a story from 1975 called Bluebell Meadow by Benedict Kiley.
What nosy neighbor had told somebody who told somebody who told the sergeant that she had bullets in in the earthenware jug.
The story was chosen by Colin McCann, who is the author of seven books of fiction, including the National Book Award winning novel let the great world spin.
Hi, Colm.
How are you doing?
Good.
So preparing for this, I watched a bit of a documentary about Benedict Kiley in which you put him in this very limited pantheon of short story writers, which included Raymond Carver and Chekhov and Hemingway.
What is it about his work that puts him up there for you?
Well, I think he's one of the great irish voices, and not necessarily as known today as he should be, was quite well known in the early seventies.
He would get the, you know, the front cover of the New York Times.
You'd get stories in the New Yorker.
Obviously, he talked a lot about Northern Ireland as things were unfolding up north.
And, you know, the trouble started in 1968 and went on for 30 years.
And most of his writing career looked at the troubles.
But this is a really interesting story in that he's writing it in the early to mid seventies, and things were sort of out of control.
It's an odd love story that's highly political at its core as well, though.
It'S set in a much earlier time.