The Irish Goodbye

What can we learn from an ordinary life observed with extraordinary skill? In The Irish Goodbye, Beth Ann Fennelly writes of the small moments that shape a life, in the process dignifying the diminutive through the act of attention. Fennelly explores her roles as a friend, wife, mother and daughter in precise sentences. The longer essays concern Fennelly‘s relationships-with a beloved mother-in-law, a decades-long friendship between former college roommates, an artist who paints a series of nude portraits in Fennelly‘s town. Interspersed between these longer memoirs are sections of flash non-fiction, a form Fennelly innovated. With dazzling verve and wit, they capture the interstitial interactions-encounters with strangers, quirky observations, unexpected flights of fancy-that make up a richly lived life. With emotional clarity and nimble prose, Fennelly invites readers to share her affirming worldview-one in which even our smallest interactions are rife with possibility. Beth Ann Fennelly‘s Heating and Cooling was praised as: "A surprisingly maximalist portrait of a life." - New York Times Book Review "The micro-memoirs showcase a range of emotions that belies their brevity-taken from another standpoint, their brevity is what gives them power." - The Wall Street Journal