True Believers

"Mothers Are All the Same", "Volunteers" and the closing "Tru Believers" are also excellent, each exploring Irishness and personal relationships from new angles.

Some of the weaker stories appeared to me to be well-written, but perhaps meaningless, or less rewarding. "The Long Way Home", for example, is a story of a journey that is both physical and spiritual, but one that appears far less real and much less believable than the other journeys in the book - a loose theme of the book is a personal journey of discovery the lead character makes.

There are more reasons to pick up and read this book than there are to dismiss it. My 3 stars is a blend of the 4-5 stars I would give for the best stories, and the 1-2 stars that I feel some of the others deserve.


Heart-breakingly sad yet at times achingly funny   August 17, 2000
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

I am intrigued by the sheer pretentiousness and the triteness of the review that slated this book and must disagree. O'Connor's "True Believers" manages to be both heart breakingly sad and achingly funny in this diverse collection of stories about modern day 20-30 something "Dubliners" written in a confident yet accessible prose style. There may not be many literary pyrotechnics but to do so would ruin these poignant vignettes of urban life.


Lame   December 10, 1999
2 out of 8 found this review helpful

Early stories from an almost intriguingly bad writer. A Tender Love Story about the furtive relationship between an IRA volunteer and a British squaddie. (Wow, Joe. Heavy.) An encounter between an Irish guy and an Irish girl who meet on the ferry to England; they go to a hotel, have sex, then she goes off the next day and comes back weepy and fragile; he demands more sex, she leaves, he discovers blood on the sheet and realises, several pages later than the impatient reader, that she's had an Ab-rt--n. (Ain't men insensitive?) Avoid.