The front cover!

If Only!

"If only" is a collection of short stories written by various Irish women writers. The main themes of the book are love, divorce, marriage, adultery, bigamy, polygamy, dreams, deciet, loss of innocence, love-children, love betrayal and love triumph but I also thought it gave a detailed insight into richly diverse levels of society in Ireland in the 1990's. The writers included in the collection are : Ivy Bannister, Shelia Barrett, Maeve Binchy, Mary Rose Callaghan, Kate Cruise O'Brein, Ita Daly, Margaret Dolan, Mary Dorcey, Mary Gordon, Katy Hayes, Jennifer Johnston, Marian Keyes, Mary Leland, Liz Macmanus, Mary Maher, Mary Morrisey, Mary O'Donnell, Patricia Scanlan and Gaye Shortland.  

One of my favorite short stories was entitled "Taxi-men are invisible" by Maeve Binchy. Set in Dublin, "Eddie" a taxi-man gives a couple a lift to the gentleman's parents house inorder to watch Ireland play Holland. Over the next few weeks the couple use Eddie's cab often, but barely seem to remember him. However this is no ordinary time for the couple, Eddie seems to notice them drift further and further apart and finally agree on a divorce. The woman is very disterested by the turn of events and is offered an abundence of support by Eddie but still never seems to notice that all of the taxis she takes are driven by the same person. However not only the couple were unaware of their surroundings, Eddie also became engulfed in their story, shown in the quoatation "But Eddie wasn't thinking about it, he was thinking about the people who travelled in his car".This story stood out for me as it shows society's obliviousness to its souroundings and how people are so engrossed in their own lives they are unaware of people or events around them.  

Overall I quite liked this book. I enjoyed the diversity of its stories, however I thought it could have improved by limiting the amount of authors and stories included in the book.

Thank you,

        

          Aoife xx