Like many of the great Irish writers before him, Dermot Healy first
announced himself as a writer of intricate and innovative short stories.
Healy's stories are set in small-town Ireland and its rural environs,
and in the equally suffocating confines of the Irish expat communities
in London. Throughout these texts, Healy demonstrates a deep sense of
compassion towards the marginalized and the dispossessed, without ever
becoming sentimental or clichéd. The language is earthy and imagistic by
turn, and he continually seeks to extend the formal boundaries of the
genre.Gathering all of Healy's stories together for the first time, this
collection includes the long prose-drama "Before the Off" and Healy's
final short works, "Along the Lines" and "Images."