Publisher:
Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Penguin Random House
Order from these booksellers, or your local bookshop:
Penguin (multiple links) Waterstones Easons Amazon
Foyles Dubray
SHINE/VARIANCE: OUT NOW
“Great, beautiful little studies of unspoken fear and longing and love, told with a sure-footed delicacy rare in a debut”
Sarah Moss, Irish Times
“Astonishing…the collection’s sharpness, poetics and wit make for an immensely pleasurable read. ”
Niamh Donnelly, Irish Independent
“Startling, adventurous, and often wonderful. I loved this collection” -Roddy Doyle
“A hugely accomplished debut from a writer who sees beauty, struggle and the redemption in the everyday” – Irish Examiner
“The most powerful new collection I’ve read in some years” – John Boyne
“Inventive, dazzling, devastating and laugh out loud funny…an astonishingly good debut” – Danielle McLaughlin
Welcome to the website of Stephen Walsh.
I’m an Irish writer. In the past few years I’ve been listed for five awards and had stories published in The White Review, The Stinging Fly and broadcast on RTE Radio.
My debut collection of short stories Shine/Variance was published on July 1st, 2021 by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
You can read and listen to some stories from it here.
My debut novel will follow.
Twitter: @stephentwalsh
Early Praise for Shine/Variance :
These stories pack an emotional punch…there’s not a weak link in this chain of stories. A hugely accomplished debut from a writer who sees beauty, struggle and the redemption in the everyday.
Great, beautiful little studies of unspoken fear and longing and love, told with a sure-footed delicacy rare in a debut. Playful and often funny…Walsh’s voices are small but strong, his triumphs and tragedies no less haunting for their intimate scale.
Astonishing…immensely readable. The collection’s sharpness, poetics and wit make for an immensely pleasurable read. Walsh looks to be a writer of great promise.
Stephen Walsh writes of the complexities of family life with insight and humour. The most powerful new collection I’ve read in some years.
An exciting, original, and very welcome new voice. Stephen Walsh draws unexpected beauty from the familiar, the tragic, the darkly comic situations any of us could find ourselves in, composing perfect little symphonies from the haphazard chords of existence. He is a witty, insightful and very skilled writer, and the voices in this collection sing from the page.
These are startling, adventurous and often wonderful stories. I loved this collection.
A striking new talent in Irish literature. These stories vibrate with wry humour while always packing a serious emotional punch. Slyly revealing how we communicate today; how the language of modern technology, travel, and ambition have infiltrated our deepest thoughts, Walsh illustrates that, in fact, little has changed in the human heart since James Joyce published Dubliners, which this collection brings to mind. Hugely entertaining, gripping and moving, Shine/Variance announces the arrival of a wonderful new voice for our times.
Inventive, dazzling, devastating and laugh out loud funny, the stories in Shine/Variance are all this and more. It’s exhilarating to read such remarkable writing. An astonishingly good debut from a writer who clearly finds joy in language.
Stephen Walsh’s first collection is full of assured originality and freshness – a new writer much to be welcomed.
This collection depicts with caustic wit and insight the undersides of Irish domesticity: the quiet angers and atrophying dissatisfactions. Flaunting an enviable dexterity in both voice and style, Shine/Variance is an addictive collection, rich in moments that linger in your consciousness.
Stephen Walsh’s writing is at once original, sharp and funny. The richness of his insight and storytelling fits wonderfully into the breadth and depth of Irish writing today.
This is a brilliant collection; formally audacious, darkly funny, utterly unique. Stephen Walsh’s characters are so terrifyingly authentic I read through slotted fingers, mortified for them, and several times he had me on my feet. I loved this book.
Stephen Walsh’s stories are often playful, sometimes twisted, in form and tone, but the dexterity on display allows for deep, subtle and profoundly moving explorations of modern life.
These stories are brilliantly bats, staggeringly compelling and ferociously funny. Stephen Walsh rips the concreteness of reality straight from us and reflects back a more wobbly version of our turbulent lives. Characters are lost, lonely, restless, confused, but always gagging to roll out the very best of havoc humanity can offer. Voice, style and structure are completely unique. If someone shoved George Saunders into a giant kaleidoscope, along with a few episodes of Black Mirror, popping candy and a mescal worm, and gave it a good twist they’d get Shine/Variance.
From Chatto & Windus:
A sharp and insightful debut short story collection about the pitfalls of ordinary life
A wife yearns to escape the tight-fisted confines of a package holiday. A boy dreams of footballing greatness as his mother mourns a loss. A man tries to assemble an absent child’s playhouse, with impossible instructions and too much beer. A woman seeks clarity from automated voices. A father is distracted from Christmas tree shopping with his son by the looming pressure of quarterly sales targets.
Shine/Variance captures the tiny crises and wonders of daily life with warmth, wit and decisive clarity. Ordinary people – commuters, call centre workers, children and parents – struggle for stability while craving more, and the schism between expectation and reality is only rarely bridged. Yet, amidst the faltering, recognition and bright moments of hope still illuminate their days.
Fresh, tender and darkly funny, these stories are a window into the longings, frustrations and painfully human connections of ordinary life from a remarkable new voice in fiction.