Living with Saints

(, New edition)

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In a book that owes as much to Madonna the pop star as the Virgin Mary, Mary O'Connell presents a collection of stories in which the spirit of a female saint infuses and informs the experiences of contemporary women in difficult predicaments. St Agnes the Patron Saint of Girls delivers a hilarious running commentary to a high-school class being subjected to a hopelessly out-of-date sex-education video. St Anne, Patron Saint of Mothers, offers words of advice to a mother who sleeps with her boss in exchange for time off with her infant daughter.Though her heroines may hover on the brink of despair, Mary O'Connell retains a buoyant freshness throughout this collection, which takes the dusty icons down from their shelves, and sets their spirits loose in the modern world.

Reviews

Ten divine stories, and beautifully written. Restore your faith in the short story with this funny, gentle, tough and powerful collection. - Ali Smith

A hilarious update and urbanisation of traditional stories of the sanctified and sacrificed... Irreverent and wickedly funny, LIVING WITH SAINTS is O'Connell's way of bringing the saints kicking and screaming into relevancy in the 21st century - Ireland on Sunday

Wickedly funny, crisp and unique. O'Connell's voice grabs you by the throat and elicits both laughter and tears. The only sin here would be one of omission - read this gem immediately, preferably with vodka. - Suzanne Finnamore

O'Connell's powerful short-story collection draws upon the lives of the saints to show the divine at work in even the most mundane lives. With humour that is often biting but never malicious, authentic and never forced, O'Connell finds parallels between ancient saints and contemporary women. [These stories] are irreverent, but never profane. - Library Journal

O'Connell is a talent to watch. - Kirkus Reviews

Wickedly clever [and] sassy in tone from the opening sentence... Serious topics are addressed in every story and the links between myth and life are tight and always unexpected... Traditionalists may be shocked, but everyone else (nonreligious readers included) will be delighted with these well-crafted, inventive and highly origi

Author Bio

Mary O'Connell is a graduate of the University of Kansas and the Iowa Writer's Workshop, where she studied under Thom Jones and Marilyn Robinson. She was a Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren Finalist in 1999 and has been published in numerous literary journals. Currently O'Connell teaches at the Lawrence Arts Centre and is at work on a novel. She lives in Lawrence, Kansas, with her husband and two-year-old daughter. Her grandmother was obsessed with saints.