In the following essay, Eckley offers a thematic and stylistic overview of Kiely's short fiction.
Sean McMahon, when he commented on Kiely's fiction for Eire-Ireland, described it as ...
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In the following essay, Casey notes the influence of William Carleton on Kiely's fiction and traces the development of his short stories.
Irish writers have made significant contributions to...
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In the following laudatory review of The State of Ireland, Moynahan contends that “this richly varied and beautifully produced collection puts Benedict Kiely in the front rank of modern short-s...
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In the following review, King provides a favorable assessment of The State of Ireland.
The title of the novella which concludes Benedict Kiely's collection of short stories [The State of Ire...
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In the following interview, initially published in the spring of 1987 by the Irish Literary Supplement, Kiely discusses his Irish upbringing, his creative process, and influences on his writing.
I ...
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In the following review of A Letter to Peachtree and Nine Other Stories, Keefe praises Kiely's storytelling ability and unique narrative voice.
A writer of parts, Benedict Kiely has practice...
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In the following essay, O'Grady finds parallels between the fiction of Kiely and William Carleton.
“He wrote good stories and he wrote very inferior stories,” Benedict Kiely de...
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Critical Essay by Grace Eckley
At the time of Land Without Stars, World War II casts darkness over the British Isles. While Northern Ireland's soldiers fight with Britain against Germany, the ...
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Critical Essay by Anatole Broyard
People, landscape, song, sex, religion and violence—this is what Ireland seems to be made of in "The State of Ireland," a novella and 17 stories...
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Critical Essay by Terence Winch
Most of the stories in … The State of Ireland focus on strange pairings off, on mismatched people whose unlikely relationships lead to surprising revelations, i...
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Critical Essay by Guy Davenport
[The first meaning of "The State of Ireland"] is that it's a place where stories are still told, deliciously and by masters of the art, of whom Be...
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Critical Essay by Robert Tracy
In the best sense of the word, Kiely is a local writer—that is, a writer who knows and loves a particular place and realizes that the life of that place can repr...
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Critical Essay by The Times Literary Supplement
A Ball of Malt and Madame Butterfly is uniformly excellent. Mr. Kiely's style is bawdy and hilarious. He writes with spacious confidence and, it...
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Critical Essay by Daniel J. Casey
To a greater degree than even he would perhaps admit, the content and technique of Kiely's fiction are dictated by a voice out of the past….
For mor...
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Critical Essay by Tom Paulin
Benedict Kiely's novella deals with the sinister politics of Ulster. His title, Proxopera, derives from the terrorist tactic of having bombs delivered by proxy...
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Critical Essay by Felix Pickering
[Proxopera is important for] the insight Mr. Kiely gives into a disturbed community. His book, he says, is "a condemnation of the interference by violent men ...
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Critical Essay by Mary Kenny
Benedict Kiely [is] an Ulster scholar, novelist, storyteller, talker, walker, bard,…: he knows Ireland from the stones up. And in his book about his travels around...
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Critical Essay by Mary Hope
Benedict Kiely's control over his material seems loose enough, but is, in fact skilfully exercised in this free-wheeling collection [A Cow in the House & Other ...
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Critical Essay by Douglas Sealy
["A Cow in the House"] contains the stories of a man talking easily, of a man whose memories crowd in on him, some merry, some melancholy, but all demand...
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Critical Essay by Thomas Flanagan
Benedict Kiely, a writer in whom are joined magnificent lyrical and comic gifts, is one of the most admired of literary figures in his native Ireland…. [The S...
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