Bought in Dublin, Collins is a writer I’ve read in the past and often had a hard time finding his books in the US (I’ve occasionally ordered them from Amazon UK) so I was on the lookout for him.
These stories are such a unique combination of funny and harsh: you’re sometimes embarrassed to be laughing at the funny parts, particularly as they’re so quickly followed by the serious and dark.
Catholics dealing with the prophesised end of the world; the portioning out throughout the day as an alcoholic drinks himself to death… I think my favorite may have been “The Horses” where a man is a wildly accurate race picker to no benefit to himself.