The Property Baron and Other Stories

Linda McNamara Foreword by Catherine Dunne “In the end, he’d had to doctor the figures to get the loan; he’d been confident at the time that it would never make any difference, but now he was worried. Whenever he pulled up the details of his property holdings, it seemed to him that all the major events of his life – school, college, joining the firm, his marriage, his mother’s final illness – were of less importance than the complex spreadsheets scrolling past on the grey screen. He’d long since stopped thinking about the past, had come to believe that leaving it all behind as Miriam had done was best . . .” – From “The Property Baron” These deftly told, amusing but disturbing stories vividly capture an Ireland in flux and crisis where the coping classes, “the squeezed middle”, increasingly face the threat of economic and emotional meltdown. The writing is taut and poised. The protagonists, credible and beautifully brought to life, must seek whatever salvation they can as certainties collapse around them.

About the Author

Linda McNamara, who passed away last August after a lengthy illness, worked as an Assistant Keeper at the National Library of Ireland. Her previous collection of short stories, Drinker at the Spring of Kardaki, was published by Wolfhound Press and hailed by The Irish Times as “stories that repay re-reading, sophisticated, well written and subtle”.