After a Dance cover art

After a Dance

Selected Stories

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About this listen

'These are some of the wildest, arresting, just plain brilliant short stories I've read in a long time.' - Roddy Doyle, author of The Woman Who Walked Into Doors

After a Dance is the compiled collection of short stories from acclaimed writer Bridget O'Connor, with an exclusive preface written and read by the author's daughter, Constance Straughan.

Bridget O'Connor was one of the great short story writers of her generation. She had a voice that was viscerally funny and an eye for both the glaring reality and the absurdity of the everyday.

In After A Dance, we meet a selection of O'Connor's most memorable characters often living on the margin of their own lives: from the anonymous thief set on an unusual prize to the hungover best man clinging to what he's lost, to the unrepentant gold-digger who always comes out on top. From unravelling narcissists to melancholy romantics all human life is here - at its best and at its delightful worst.

 Anthologies & Short Stories City Life Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Romance Short Stories Urban World Literature Funny

Critic reviews

To call [these stories] characterful is to undersell these Technicolor prose screams, these screeching narrative sprints, this filthy feast of stories. Think Irvine Welsh meets Edna O’Brien . . . pure, delicious naughty fun.
These are some of the wildest, arresting, just plain brilliant short stories I've read in a long time. (Roddy Doyle, author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha )
A storytelling genius before her time
Wickedly funny, stylishly written, I relished each and every one of these stories
Every O’Connor story is a performance, a live fight with time and decay, disgust and the human body. She wrote intensely from her time and place; to read her now is to be catapulted back to 1990s London. Yet the voice, the themes are more relevant than ever. No wonder she was so preoccupied with temporality: she was before her time. (Martina Evans)
'[Bridget O'Connor] was an incredible short story writer . . . hilarious, tragic, shuddering (Laura Hackett)
'Mostly brief, sometimes brutal, always funny . . . a master of the [short story]. The results are both vivacious and vicious. But even at their most painful, they sing
Bridget O'Connor creates unforgettable voices . . . Sad, funny, disturbing, the tales in After a Dance are odd, and oddly luminous
These stories have more electricity in them than many novels
In this new collection her most accomplished and most devastating stories lie side by side. O’Connor writes of everyday characters so pitiful they are ridiculous, so awful they become lovable . . . The language is unexpected and the twists are often absurd. Reading O’Connor is always a delight
All stars
Most relevant
I did not enjoy either the performances or the stories themselves, sorry. To me, they were not especially well written and I found the content dark and unsettling in a strange way.

Did not enjoy these stories

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I wanted to be swept up by the stories because of their vivid characters. That didn't happen for me but it was probably my lack of understanding of the style. I felt like I turned up at Coachella dressed as Biggles 🕊️🫣♥️

reactionary, edgy, sharp

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