Cathy Sweeney

One winter morning, in contemporary Dublin, a middle-class woman wakes up next to her husband in her suburban home, and without conscious purpose, walks out the front door to begin a journey that ultimately leads to profound transfiguration. She travels first by car and then train to Rosslare, from where she takes a ferry to Fishguard in Wales. Along the way, she finds herself in service stations, shopping centres, train stations, ferry terminals; recalling her youth, earlier fantasies of suicide and reminiscing about those people who have come in and out of her life. Finally, 48 hours later, alone and isolated in a cottage in Wales, in a strange and eerie landscape, the woman reaches her nadir. Breakdown is a novel about the rage and reckoning of a middle aged, educated woman who has lived her life in accordance with the expectations of society.

Breakdown

There once was ... a woman who loved her husband's cock so much that she began taking it to work in her lunchbox. a man who made films without a camera, which transfixed his estranged daughter. a couple who administered electric shocks to each other, to be reminded of what love is. a world where you wake up one day and notice that, one by one, people are turning blue Startling, wry, beguiling and emotionally charged - the stories in Modern Times might be reminiscent of Lydia Davis, Angela Carter and Daisy Johnson, but they are also unlike anything you've read before.

Modern Times

One winter morning on an ordinary day in contemporary Dublin, an ordinary middle-class woman wakes up in her ordinary suburban home. Her husband is next to her in bed, her teenage children sleeping nearby.

Without thinking much about it, she walks out the front door and never comes back.

She travels first by car, then train, then ferry. Along the way, she finds herself in service stations and shopping centres, hotel bars and hairdressers - and in the beds of strange men.

Finally, forty-eight hours later, alone in a cottage in Wales, the woman faces up to what she has been ignoring inside herself, her family, modern society: signs of breakdown.

Breakdown 

Tempi moderni

Una moglie ama il marito, lo ama così tanto che ogni giorno si porta il suo membro al lavoro, nel portapranzo accanto ai panini e ai biscotti. Un uomo che non mangia le arance incomincia a manifestare una profonda e inquietante ossessione per questi frutti e la loro decomposizione. Una donna una mattina si sveglia e scopre che la sua caviglia destra è blu, poi anche l’altra caviglia, poi le gambe. Un palazzo si ammala: torri, mura e fontane si sgretolano e marciscono, colpite da una misteriosa infezione che sembra pesare anche sui suoi abitanti. Una coppia si somministra a turno scosse elettriche per rinforzare il proprio amore. In un villaggio si narra una storia di taglialegna, lupi e fanciulle, ma non è la favola che pensiamo di conoscere.Sono racconti che assomigliano alla materia dei sogni: fiabe delicate e grottesche in cui le regole e le certezze del nostro mondo sono deformate e piegate, in cui i protagonisti sono mossi da pulsioni e bisogni irresistibili, in cui la sequenza degli eventi rompe gli argini della logica e si rivela perfettamente sensata nella sua assurdità. Cathy Sweeney ha tagliato, levigato e asciugato il linguaggio fino alla sua essenza, condensandolo in storie simili a gemme rare, nelle cui facce si riflette il bizzarro e spietato umorismo delle nostre esistenze e che rimangono indelebilmente fissate nell’animo di chi legge.

One winter morning on an ordinary day in contemporary Dublin, an ordinary middle-class woman wakes up in her ordinary suburban home. Her husband is next to her in bed, her teenage children sleeping nearby. Without thinking much about it, she walks out the front door and never comes back. She travels first by car, then train, then ferry. Along the way, she finds herself in service stations and shopping centres, hotel bars and hairdressers - and in the beds of strange men. Finally, forty-eight hours later, alone in a cottage in Wales, the woman faces up to what she has been ignoring inside herself, her family, modern society: signs of breakdown. From one of Ireland's most provocative and admired writers, this is a story of rage and reckoning, joy and transformation.

Cathy Sweeney

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