Dinosaurs on Other Planets

(Paperback)

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Description

'An exquisite collection from an exciting new voice in short fiction' Lady

A woman battles bluebottles as she plots an ill-judged encounter with a stranger; a young husband commutes a treacherous route to his job in the city, fearful for the wife and small daughter he has left behind; a mother struggles to understand her nine-year-old son's obsession with dead birds and the apocalypse.

In Danielle McLaughlin's stories, the world is both beautiful and alien. Men and women negotiate their surroundings as a tourist might navigate a distant country: watchfully, with a mixture of wonder and apprehension. Here are characters living lives in translation, ever at the mercy of distortions and misunderstandings, striving to make sense both of the spaces they inhabit and of the people they share them with.

Reviews

This is not a debut in the usual sense; a promise of greater things to come. There is no need to ask what Danielle McLaughlin will do next, she has done it already. This book has arrived. I think it will stay with us for a long time - Anne Enright

Dinosaurs on Other Planets is full of such arresting, resonant and precise writing . . . an impressive achievement. It makes the world feel ancient and alien, familiar and new - Financial Times

I found each story in Dinosaurs on Other Planets captivating in its own way. McLaughlin has a talent for creating tension in her scenes of everyday reality . . . I felt compelled to go back to the beginning of some stories after I finished them and reread them now that I had a fuller understanding of the characters. This is the mark of great fiction as these stories have real depth which isn't immediately apparent. They are also so entertaining and beautifully-written that they made me want to spend more time with them. As this is only a debut collection, I think Danielle McLaughlin demonstrates tremendous skill and confidence in her writing . . . a book to be savoured - lonesomereader

I read the title story in the New Yorker last year and immediately wanted more. There is a lot stirring beneath the surface in the stories, the characters often balancing on the edge of calamity. They are taut with words unsaid and fights unhad, and the endings are all that endings should be - Metro

A finely-formed debut book, with some fine narration, often involving a very reasoned and reasonable look at quite rarefied circumstances. Fans of short story books will definitely relish this one - Bookbag

McLaughlin has a flair for making her stories crystallise around a striking image . . . Most of the stories are slices of life from the author's native Ireland . . . but she zaps a new vividness into it with the quality of her writing - Sunday Times

Beautifully strange - Sunday Express

Although this is her first collection, it has none of the tentativeness of a debut - the narrative voice is assured and exact, each story's atmosphere a compelling, self-contained world . . . An exquisite collection from an exciting new voice in short fiction - Lady

Author Bio

Danielle McLaughlin's stories have appeared in publications including the New Yorker, the Stinging Fly and the Irish Times, as well as various anthologies. She has won the Willesden Short Story Prize, the Merriman Short Story Competition in memory of Maeve Binchy and the Dromineer Literary Festival short story competition. Dinosaurs on Other Planets is her first collection.