HOME AUTHORS ABOUT US FAQS SUBMISSIONS CONTACT PRIVACY NOTICE
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HOME AUTHORS ABOUT US FAQS SUBMISSIONS CONTACT PRIVACY NOTICE |
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Mary Beckett
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We are very sad to announce that Mary Beckett died on 10 November 2013 at the age of 87. She was one of the finest writers of her generation and captured the voice of ordinary women in Belfast. She was greatly loved by her family, her friends and all those who were touched by her writing. Mary Beckett began writing short stories when she was 23, first for BBC radio and then for literary magazines in Dublin, Cork and Belfast. In 1980 Poolbeg Press in Ireland brought out a collection of her short stories, A Belfast Woman. In 1987 Bloomsbury published her first novel, Give them Stones, which has also appeared in America through Beech Tree / William Morrow. Beech Tree have also published A Belfast Woman. Her next collection for Bloomsbury was A Literary Woman, described by the Sunday Times as "a striking collection... immensely effective". She has also written children's books, including A Family Tree [Poolbeg Press] and Hannah, or the Pink Balloons [Marino].
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Books
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Hannah or Pink Balloons
Hannah and her brothers, Mark and Ben, go to stay for six weeks with their Belfast
grandmother while their parents are away. She lives nearby but Hannah, in particular,
is to find that life only a few streets away can be very different from what
she us used to.
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A Literary Woman
"The unusual quality of Beckett's writing lies in the sharpness of her discreetly
conveyed perceptions. Nothing is stated directly; everything is suggested by artful
juxtaposition of images or the unexpected twist of a sentence."
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Give Them Stones
"Mary Beckett has succeeded admirably in capturing the voice of this
'perfectly ordinary' woman of Belfast."
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A Belfast Woman
"For Mary Beckett is an extraordinary miniaturist of ordinary lives, lives
of quiet despair sometimes relieved by quixotic gestures of defiance."
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A Family Tree Bob, Kate and Jim are sent to stay with relatives when their mother is about to have twins.
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Orla Was Six Orla O'Neill lives in North Belfast. She has two brothers, Hugh and Art.
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Orla At School At School, Orla and her friends take part in a concert, visit the zoo and wait for tadpoles to turn into frogs.
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