The extraordinary new story collection from one of Ireland's greatest writers and bestselling
author of Mindwinter Break. Bernard MacLaverty is a consummately gifted short-story writer and
novelist whose work - like that of John McGahern William Trevor Edna O'Brien or Colm Tóibín -
is deceptively simple on the surface but carries a turbulent undertow. Everywhere the dark
currents of violence persecution and regret pull at his subject matter: family love the
making of art Catholicism the Troubles and latterly ageing. Blank Pages is a collection of
twelve extraordinary new stories that show the emotional range of a master. 'Blackthorns' for
instance tells of a poor out-of-work Catholic man who falls gravely ill in the sectarian
Northern Ireland of 1942 but is brought back from the brink by an unlikely saviour. The most
recently written story here is the harrowing but transcendent 'The End of Days' which imagines
the last moments in the life of painter Egon Schiele watching his wife dying of Spanish flu -
the world's worst pandemic until now. Much of what MacLaverty writes is an amalgam of sadness
and joy of circumlocution and directness. He never wastes words but neither does he ever
forget to make them sing. Each story he writes creates a universe. 'Can we just accept that
Bernard MacLaverty is one of the greats now?' Herald
