With an easy fluid style, Kevin Barry introduces us to moments from life and elsewhere, with a collection of mostly excellent stories, mostly soaked with the drink and the Irish.
My favourites are the first, Atlantic City, the brilliance bravura performance of Party at Helen’s, and the final story, The Penguins. ( )

The weaker stories here make me want to revise my opinion of Dark Lies the Island a little bit higher – there are a few tales here that do, for whatever reason, fall a bit short of the mark. But that doesn’t make this a bad collection. Far from it; as a debut, it pretty much crushes it and even looking at it retrospectively, you can see the talent that comes to the fore in Barry’s more recent works. I’ve said this twice now and I’ll say it at least once more before the year is out – but you need to read Kevin Barry. He’s an uncommon talent, all the more uncommon for how simple and life-like his insights can be.

More at RB (http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2013/09/30/there-are-little-kingdoms/) and at TNBBC (http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/drew-reviews-there-are-little-kingdoms.html) ( )

This title came to me heavily amped by Gordon Lish. He had instructed me to read a short story placed by Kevin Barry in a recent New Yorker magazine, which I did, and which I thought was OK, but nothing that would make me want to read an entire book of these short fictions. But I bought the book anyway, and I also bought the one novel he wrote just in case Mr. Lish was on to something the rest of the world would one day climb aboard on too and I could make a buck or two on selling a first printing. Lately I have been reading so many good books and having a rather lot of fun doing so. But I took a quick peek at the first story "Atlantic City" and was wowed by its language and dialogue. If the rest of the book were to continue on at this level of quality I would have been so amazed. But it is easy to bet that i wasn't. Hard for an entire book of short stories to flat knock me out unless the writer's name is Raymond Carver.

However, the first two stories are worth putting the cash down for the purchase of the entire book. The character James in "Atlantic City" will stay with you for a very long time. At least he is still with me weeks after the fact. Brilliant piece. Pinball wizard who talks personality, walks personality. Big fellow. A character unlike any you have ever met. The language and story in the second offering "In the Hills" is also done nicely and is basically about a boy hiking a bit with two quite different girls, staying overnight in a B&B before heading back down, and the choices offered when it came time for a possible pairing up for that evening. But looking back even now I would say that even that story wasn't so hot. The first one is, however. One of the best tales I have read in some time. "Atlantic City". I say find the story somewhere online and just skip buying the book. That is my thoughtful advice. As a whole, THERE ARE LITTLE KINGDOMS is not what is has been cracked up to be. It is proof that Gordon and I don't always agree, but still our relationship endures. ( )

There’s a sense of humanity to Kevin Barry’s stories. If they contain a message it might be this: Live the best life you can, while you can. He doesn’t oversell it, but uses his characters as examples, often of what not to do. Many are “propelled by a talent for hopeless optimism.” The mood is often of “feeble afternoons with coal smoke for light.” There is drink, delusion, and some madness. “Those who go mad go mad first in the afternoons.”

His characters speak in accents “designed for roaring over chainsaws and horsing out ballads to the fallen martyrs of Irish republicanism” and are “fine specimens of bile and fear and broken sleep.”

Barry is very good with words and descriptions. From Breakfast Wine:
“They say it takes just three alcoholics to keep a small bar
running in a country town and while myself and the cousin,
Thomas, were doing what we could, we were a man shy,
and these were difficult days for Mr. Kelliher, licensee of
The North Star, Pearse Street.”

In Animal Needs a father, husband, and incompetent poultry farmer makes a total mess of his life. In Atlantic City, a summer evening in an Irish town shows tantalizing promise – for a while. In The Penguins an over-the-pole flight makes an emergency landing in Greenland. The passengers and crew survive by shuffling in concentric circles like penguins and finishing the supply of alcohol. All except two emerge victorious after rescue, the survivors “hungover and newborn.”

Barry delves into magical realism in several stories. In See The Tree, How Big It’s Grown a man appears to begin his life in his 50s, on a bus, with no recollection of who he is, other than hints he picks up along the way.

A genie in “a pair of troubled chinos, an overcoat with fag burns on its lapels, a pair of scuffed Nikes and a leery, self-satisfied smirk” appears to the troubled owner of a failing antique shop in Burn The Bad Lamp. He’ll grant a “client” any three wishes, with a caveat: “All I’m asking you to do is live intelligently.”

In the title story a man finds himself in an afterworld where dead people from his past appear, seasons change without warning, and life has a kind of “vagueness that surrounds your existence like a fine mist.”

There Are Little Kingdoms is a wonderful collection. ( )

On a limited number of occasions in my life I have been reading a novel or short story and realised the perfection of the author’s description by recognising the place and atmosphere from my own experience. This happened as I read “Atlantic City”, the first story in Kevin Barry’s award winning collection, “There are Little Kingdoms”.

This first story is typical of the majority of pieces in this book; it captures the very essence of its location; it portrays the characters in a vivid reality; it uses the real language of the people involved.

Atlantic City describes the activities, characters and conversations in a makeshift amusement arcade, or more accurately a shed with a pool table and a couple of pin-ball machines in a small rural town. I was very struck by this story as I have spent many hours in just such an establishment and Barry managed to capture the place, its atmosphere and its characters perfectly.

In most of the stories that follow Barry uses the same skill to present the reader with accurate vignettes of life, mostly in Ireland. He describes the location, captures the atmosphere, uses accurate language, and brings real characters to life. His writing is so realistic I could almost name some of the characters in his stories from my own life.

I didn’t feel the last two stories were as strong as the eleven preceding tales, but that does not take away from the power of this marvellous little book of stories.

Kevin Barry won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature on the basis of this collection. He then went on to write a novel, “The City of Bohane”. I have read and enjoyed his novel, and it was based on my experience with this novel that I sought out the author’s collection of short stories. His name has been added to the list of writers whose work I will read as soon as it becomes available. ( )