Description
The past has caught up with Martin LeBris. During World War II, he served the Office of Strategic Services as a spy and saboteur in Lyon, France. Nearly sixty years later, Lowell cop Gerry O'Neil is trying to unravel the mystery of why an assassin is stalking LeBris. The answer to that question lies buried in the dark days of Nazi Occupation, and in the unforgiving memory of The Spy in the City of Books.
Stephen O’Connor’s fiction and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines. He is the author of a recently released collection of short stories entitled Smokestack Lightning (Loom Press, 2010). He was born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, a frequent setting for his writing, and attended university in Amherst and Boston, Massachusetts, and Dublin, Ireland. While working and traveling in France, he became fascinated with stories of the French Resistance. The novel The Spy in the City of Books arose out of this interest, and out of interviews with a former OSS agent who served in Occupied France as a liaison between London and the French Forces of the Interior. O’Connor lives in Lowell with his wife Olga and their two children.
Review by
Caveat Emptor
I read the first 20 or so pages, when the author is setting the stage, and got busy with other things. When I came back I couldn't put it down. The pace accelerates, both in the present and in the flashbacks to wartime France. The flashbacks feel true because O'Connor did extensive interviews with an OSS agent who was dropped behind enemy lines to support the French Resistance---and had incredible tales to tell. Take it on an airplane, because all you'll miss is the in-flight movie.
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Description
In his first collection, Stephen O'Connor arrives fully formed as a writer--with 13 memorable stories filled with characters pulled from the streets, bars, and parishes of his historic mill-city: Lowell, Mass. He digs deep and find the essential humanity in the high and low of our daily rounds. Admired for his clear narrative style and fine ear for dialogue, O'Connor invents a world in these stories that lets us see and hear the essential drama in what might appear to be undramatic lives at first glance. His characters arise from the people whose stories often go untold. His readers are richer for the encounters in these pages.
Review
Emotional, rich in word craft, Stephen O'Connor's short stories continue to evoke strong responses and a solid following of readers at The Houston Literary Review. --Bill Brocato, The Houston Literary Review
Stephen O'Connor is a storyteller in the great tradition of Kazantzakis, Sherwood Anderson, and William Saroyan. These tales, rich in the variety of their telling, ring with an authentic voice. Like all good art they detail a time and place and convey, by degrees, the pathos, poignancy, and laughter of what Saroyan calls the human comedy.
--David Daniel, author of Reunion and Coffin Dust
Stephen O'Connor made three appearances in The Massachusetts Review during my years as editor. He's funny, mysterious, tough yet romantic -- like everybody from Lowell, I guess -- but with the Howlin' Wolf bred in.
--David Lenson |
The Massachusetts
Review is published independently with the support and cooperation of
Amherst, Hampshire,
Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges, and the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst
Volume 46, Number 3:
Fall 2005
 Introduction by
David Lenson;
Fiction by Zdravka Evtimova,
Stephen
O'Connor, Emmanuel Boulukos,
Heather Sellers, Christine Lanoie,
Justine
Dymond; Poetry by Kathleen Halme III,
Martin
Espada, Brian Turner,
Simon Perchik,
Morgan Lucas Schuldt, Bruce Bond, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Xochiquetzal Candelaria,
Myrna Stone,
Johnny Lorenz, Jon Kelly Yenser, Georgia Scott; Essays
and Articles by Sterling Stuckey,
Thomas
L. Dumm,
Claire Kahane, Kathleen Spivack.
Complete
Table of Contents
Volume 45, Number
2: Summer 2004
 Introduction by David
Lenson; Fiction by
Stephen
O'Connor, Shannon Cain, Gregory
Blake Smith, David Rutschman,
Malena Watrous Erika Williams Linda
McCullough Moore; Poetry by Gerard Malanga, Diane
Wald, Kristin Bock,
Hadara Bar-Nadav, Arthur Rimbaud, translated by
Laure-Anne Bosselaar and Kurt Brown, Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by
Annie Boutelle, Catherine Barnett, Darryl Phelps, K.E. Duffin, Fred
Yannantuono, Erika Mikkalo
Essays and Articles by Paul
Marion, Lesley
Lee Francis, Robert Erwin, Jerome Richard, A. Sandosharaj, Kerrie
Mitchell.
Complete
Table of Contents
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