“Being Various” is a collection of ‘New Irish Short Stories’ i.e. their authors are all Irish, as are most (but not all) of the stories’ locations.
By and large it’s an interesting and inoffensive compendium; the stories are well-written, and the collection’s cover trumpets some ‘big names’: Sally Rooney, Sinéad Gleeson, Eimear McBride, and Kevin Barry, two of whose novels I have read. I’ve also read McBride elsewhere, but I have to say that I found their offering here too ‘experimental’ for my taste. Indeed, in places it is so almost not prose that chunks of it could easily be found in a collection of modern poetry. Is that a good or bad thing? ‘Hybrid’, perhaps? I’ll leave that up to you.
On the whole though “Being Various” is a good anthology, and I wouldn’t want to put anyone off reading it.
Ian Gouge - Writer 