By Salt Water

The 'salt water' of Angela Bourke's first collection is not only the sea, but also tears, sweat, and the amniotic fluid where we first swim. Often on the brink, her women narrators encounter varius lessons in a variet of landscapes: shadows of cruelty (and mortality) in the back lanes of 1960s Dublin, to affairs of the hear in America, Europe and the West of Ireland in 1990s. Struggling to find their way (and themselves) in a world they cannot always comprehend, they discover many ways to tell a story.