{"product_id":"book-zkss","title":"The Irish Goodbye","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA new, genre-defying volume that explores family, marriage, motherhood, place, and coming of age with singular wit and emotional clarity.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat can we learn from an ordinary life observed with extraordinary skill? In \u003ci\u003eThe Irish Goodbye\u003c\/i\u003e, Beth Ann Fennelly writes of the small moments that shape a life, whether moving or perplexing or troubling or gladdening, in the process dignifying the diminutive through the act of attention. Fennelly explores her roles as a friend, wife, mother, and daughter, documenting a brush with an old flame or the devastating death of her sister in crystalline, precise sentences.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe longer essays concern Fennelly’s relationships—with a beloved mother-in-law, a decades-long friendship between five former college roommates, an artist who paints a series of nude portraits in Fennelly’s town, for which she poses. Interspersed between these longer memoirs are sections of flash nonfiction, a form Fennelly innovated in the genre-defying \u003ci\u003eHeating \u0026amp; Cooling\u003c\/i\u003e. With dazzling verve and wit, they capture the interstitial interactions—encounters with strangers, quirky observations, unexpected flights of fancy—that make up a richly lived life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Irish Goodbye\u003c\/i\u003e offers a rare pleasure: intimacy. With emotional clarity and nimble prose, Fennelly invites readers to share her affirming worldview—one in which even our smallest interactions are rife with possibility.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"[Fennelly] transforms the mundane into the metaphysical under the heat of her gaze. With a poet’s knack for concision and a novelist’s deep well of empathy, Fennelly makes everyday moments worthy of close reading\"\u003c\/b\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThis enhanced edition includes an audio-exclusive bonus essay, \"Of Fossils and Friendship.\"\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Recorded Books, Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":50756233953584,"sku":"BDzkss","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0879\/2784\/9264\/files\/zkss-Square-cover.jpg?v=1770773594","url":"https:\/\/downpour.com\/products\/book-zkss","provider":"Downpour","version":"1.0","type":"link"}