Old Romantics

Shortlisted for the Kate O’Brien Award - Shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year

Like Dubliners, if Dubliners were ＂Cat Person＂ as a feminist mock-epic about a writer’s coming of age--and every Dubliner was named Margaret.

A woman pursues the man who cut ahead of her in line. Two nice people report that a child has been left unsupervised at a local beach. Romances, old and new, shift and sour. Following Maggie Armstrong’s intrepid hero, Margaret, through first love, first bad date, first job, first extremely bad date, and on into midlife and its attendant disillusionment and revelations, Old Romantics is an acutely observed and hideously entertaining collection of linked short stories from an astonishing new talent. Endearingly flawed and perilously honest, Armstrong’s characters navigate a world of awkward expectation and latent hostility with piercing insight and indelible wit.

Maggie Armstrong’s work has appeared in the Dublin Review, The Stinging Fly, Banshee, and elsewhere, and was longlisted for a 2023 Irish Book Award. She lives in Dublin.