Over Our Heads

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Description

Andrew Fox's clever, witty, intense and thoroughly entertaining stories capture the passions and befuddlements of the young and rootless, equally dislocated at home and abroad. Set in Ireland and America - and, at times, in jets over the Atlantic - Over Our Heads showcases a brilliant new talent. Fourteen is too young to learn that the mind of God may hold two opposing ideas at once, without ever showing a preference for either. A young couple, engaged to be married, reconsider their options in a biblical downpour. Travelling colleagues experience an eerie moment of truth when a fire starts in their hotel. A misdirected parcel sets off a complex psychodrama involving two men, a woman and a dog . . . Andrew Fox's clever, witty, intense and thoroughly entertaining stories capture the passions and befuddlements of the young and rootless, equally dislocated at home and abroad. Set in Ireland and America - and, at times, in jets over the Atlantic - Over Our Heads showcases a brilliant new talent.

Reviews

An impressive and thoroughly enjoyable collection ... Fox lets his characters tramp around their worlds, searching for heaven on earth Irish Times The best of these stories are very good indeed ... While there are few happy souls in these arresting stories, the reader can find consolation in Fox's supple prose and frequently subtle insights Irish Independent Fox joins a band of new talented Irish short story writers, like Colin Barrett and Mary Costello, with this assured debut collection RTE Guide Fox is skilful at probing the bigger emotions: alienation, loss and nostalgia. His sparse prose is an effective counterpoint to complex feelings. His stories deal with the moments that shape a life: first trysts, the illness of a parent, the graduation of a child. ... Fox knows the hallmark of a good short story: leave the reader wanting more -- Alice Fishburn Financial Times The stories emit the peculiar uncertainty and sadness of youth and youth's end, and of moving away, of making a life or failing to. ... The slow agony of dying relationships is a binding theme, sadness heightened by the remembered sweetness of the love departed. ... [Fox] achieves the effect of intimating deep fissures of pain and longing beneath the lightest of surface cracks. Fox's prose is poised and confident, a well-honed tool with which to treat his delicate subject matter. -- Rob Doyle Sunday Times These are thoughtful, well-told stories that bring home how hard it can be to belong Herald Impressive ... First-person narrators, their voices deceptively casual and conversational, draw the unsuspecting reader in before they strike. Against a backdrop of ordinary settings and pared-down realism, the arresting images, when they come, have an explosive force The Lady A superb collection ... compassionate and knowing Irish Examiner Outstanding Hot Press A remarkable new talent ... He is able to tread so lightly that we only realise we have been cleverly punched in the solar plexus after we finish the last line -- Dermot Bolger Irish Mail on Sunday

Author Bio

Andrew Fox was born in Dublin in 1985. He has published stories in journals including The Dublin Review and The Stinging Fly. He lives in New York.