SOURCE: Melmoth, John. “Conjuring the Beast of Ballynagromoolia.” Times Literary Supplement (24 November 1989): 1312.

In the following negative review of Higgins’s collection Helsingor Station and Other Departures, Melmoth contends that the later stories and autobiographical essays are found lacking as polished works of literature.

It might have been better for Aidan Higgins's reputation if Helsingor Station and Other Departures, subtitled Fictions and autobiographies 1956-89, were really as self-defeating as it maintains: “Our past is certainly dead … it's unimaginable. Unthinkable as the legendary but extinct horseflesh Twohelochroo, or Boggeragh, or flighty Firbolg.” In fact, his past catches up with him in this collection. The suggestion that we no longer have anything to do with the person we used to be is qualified by the physical proximity of a story written in 1956 and another written in 1989. Neither dead nor forgotten, Higgins's early work sits on the page as large as life...