Dark Lies the Island: Stories - Tapa blanda

"[Kevin Barry] isn't sparing with his powers. Even his throwaway lines are keepers." --The New York Times

"He does humor. He does high drama. He even dabbles in horror (of a kind). And he can handle just about any other narrative form you might think of." --Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

"Barry's best short stories are like a spade to the face . . . [He] earns comparison with the great and shamefully neglected V. S. Pritchett, whose short stories also employed pronounced comic means for serious, compassionate ends." --The Guardian

"Outstanding . . . [These] stories triumph . . . They are funny, sad, troubling, illuminating, often in equal measure." --Financial Times

"By the end of a story, Barry has me in full sympathy with someone I might edge away from on the train. His regard for characters big and small and capacity to be funny without playing them for cheap laughs recalls George Saunders." --The New York Times Book Review

"Stealthy and shimmering . . . Darkness abounds in these thirteen stories, though it takes its different forms: vileness, foreboding, ignorance, isolation, self-delusion, despair." --The Boston Globe

"Barry is a prose wizard whose stories pulse on the page with all the humor and viciousness of life itself." --Sam Lipsyte, The Millions

"[Kevin Barry's] prose is almost literally indescribable . . . It's not hard to see a devoted following accrue around this singular talent." --Irish Independent

"A startlingly unique voice." --Observer (London)