Pure Gold: Stories
Pure Gold: Stories
by John Patrick McHugh
Two boys set fires while their worlds fall apart. A couple embark on a last-ditch effort to save their marriage. A widow seeks a stranger’s help to bury her grief. A horse crashes a house party.
‘Exquisite and arresting’—Sally Rooney ‘Full of stylish brio’—Colin Barrett
‘Full of heart and balls and mischief’—Lisa McInerney ‘A terrific collection’—Roddy Doyle
Paperback | ISBN 9781848407916 | 256pp | 26 February 2021
Set on an imagined island off the west coast of Ireland, John Patrick McHugh’s debut collection of stories conjures a complete and varied cast of characters – some lost, some lonely, many dreaming and others self-deceiving. With nuance, compassion and the darkest humour, McHugh casts a bold eye on masculinity, family and class, friendships and betrayal, and embeds us in the moments on which a life can twist and turn.
Pure Gold heralds the arrival of a vibrant new literary voice.
Praise for Pure Gold:
“This astonishing collection of stories draws the reader into a world at once familiar and deliciously strange – the world of a fictional island community off the coast of County Mayo. With an unflinching eye for injustice, cruelty and self-deceit, McHugh nonetheless approaches his cast of characters with a sincere and intelligent compassion. These stories bring to life not only the individual lives of human people, but the collective life of a whole community. In exquisite and arresting prose, this collection makes it clear that John Patrick McHugh is one of the most exciting writers working in Ireland today.”
“McHugh’s stories are monoliths that glitter with piercing detail, sunlit with godlike purpose and control.”
“John Patrick McHugh is a wildly ambitious craftsman, and such a thrilling writer of sentences.”
“This collection is refreshing and ambitious, its stories full of heart and balls and mischief.”
“McHugh’s stories are full of stylish brio, headlong with energy, and pulse with real feeling and depth. He is a young writer forging a fresh and intense new path through the landscape of Irish letters.”
“This is a terrific collection. The stories are dark, funny, honest and engrossing.”
“I’ve long been an admirer of McHugh’s precise and focused fiction. I’m so excited that these insightful, emotionally intelligent and savagely funny stories will now reach a wider audience. Pure Gold is a striking literary debut.”
“McHugh writes very tenderly about people, and very vibrantly about place. Pure Gold describes the dull lives of a splendid island, in prose that is always splendid and never dull.”
Gratefully supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.
