Old Romantics

A woman pursues a man who cut ahead of her in a line. Two nice people report that a child is being left unsupervised at a local beach. Chance meetings, spontaneous trips away, and the thrill of the new: the anticipation and the ardour, the disappointment and casual disregard. Romances, old and new, shift and sour. Maggie Armstrong's debut is a collection of alternative romances told from a netherworld of love and disenchantment. These stories, at once familiar and strange, follow the interior biography of an indistinct Dublin woman, from early adulthood into motherhood and the trials of young family life right up to the pandemic. Slippery, flawed and acute, Maggie Armstrong's narrator navigates a world of awkward expectation and latent hostility. "A few years ago my husband recommended me for a job in his company, and I thought it would be fun, and so a woman named Rosaleen would ring me for a chat. Rosaleen was a senior director in the firm, and these were scheduled chats, but I was always unprepared, running from a room, looking for a pen, or out in the rain, pushing the baby in the pram. Rosaleen had a terse and serious manner that unwound into listless expectation when my turn came to speak. I would say something and she would wait for me to say something better. Rosaleen savoured a pause. The line burned with a shared misgiving even as Rosaleen made me an astounding offer ..." ' Old Romantics' is an acutely observed and hideously entertaining collection of linked short stories from an astonishing new talent. Slippery, flawed and acute, Maggie Armstrong's narrator navigates a world of awkward expectation and latent hostility.