A family novel of 1970s Irish Catholic Boston and Achill Island. If you read one book first, begin here.
About the book Amazon
A Reading Path
Start Here
Welcome. The simplest way in is a book, or a few pages of one. There is no wrong first book, only a gentler one. The essays and studies can wait until you want them.
Begin with a book
Three first books—one novel, the poems, and a story collection—each with a page to read and a place to buy.
Twenty poems of family, water, and threshold. A full reading copy lives on the collection page.
Read the poems AmazonThe story collection. “Assumptions,” which opens it, is the story the essays on this site return to most.
About the book Read an excerpt AmazonOr read a few pages first
Openings and poems you can read here, the way you would browse a book in a shop.
A story opening and four poems first published in literary journals.
Read the samplesThe opening pages of the Kirkus-starred novel.
Read the openingThe complete collection, readable here on the site.
Read the poemsMore of the fiction
Molly Bonamici is the “Angel of Death” novel—the deadpan comedy that grew out of a single year of overwhelming loss. Read the opening.
A Prayer for Home is the novella where Molly Bonamici first speaks—a teenage Molly narrates the story of the widow next door and the storefront psychic. Read an excerpt.
Every title, with retailer links, is on the Books page.
After the first book, three essays to begin
Each is labeled by what it is and how long it takes.
One passage from the published fiction, then a few paragraphs on how it works. The gentlest way in.
Read the seriesA teacher near the end of three decades in the classroom, writing about why he still believes his students contain multitudes.
Read the essayOne reading of the whole body of work: the motifs that return, the scenes told twice, and the case for reading the books as one story.
Read the essayFor readers curious about the method
Two short pieces are the surest way into this work: the story “Assumptions,” which puts the method to work, and the essay “Teaching at Fifty-Six,” which states the belief behind it. Together they take under an hour.
“Assumptions” was James Mulhern’s first published story as an adult. It began as “Lovely Peggy” in the Emerson Review while he was an Emerson undergraduate, and later became a finalist for the Tuscany Prize for Catholic Fiction. A much-judged neighbor is taken to the beach on the Feast of the Assumption, and plain household words carry a sacred second meaning without announcing it. Most of what the later books do is already there: close attention, borrowed words put to new use, and mercy for the person everyone else has already made up their mind about. The essay “Altogether Beautiful” reads the story closely.
“Teaching at Fifty-Six” describes the same method from the inside. Near the end of three decades in the classroom, a teacher tests the words of Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, and Dickinson against his students’ lives and makes them new, as the fiction does with what it borrows. It appeared in The Font and Phenomenal Literature in 2019.
Beyond these, Author’s Notes keeps the author’s own words—the Credo, personal essays, and Musings—apart from critical readings of the novels, stories, and poems. None of it is required before the books.
Recurring Images—the motifs that keep returning: thresholds, hands, water, light, fire.
Reading Alongside—passages from O’Connor, Joyce, Carver, Heaney, Dickinson, and others set beside these poems and stories, following comparisons first made by reviewers.
For writers and students: Student Guides and The Commonplace Shelf, with craft handouts and free downloads, all gathered on the Teaching Resources page.