The fourth story in this anthology from Northern Ireland is - like the previous tale - set in the countryside. There the resemblance ends, however. 'A Loss' begins with the death of the narrator's Aunt Sheila, but it is not her death that is referred to, or not entirely. Instead, Bernie McGill gradually assembles a series of apparently trivial events to create what is possibly a ghost story, but definitely a tragedy.
This story reminded me of short fiction by the late William Trevor. It offers the same economy, the same startling combination of the commonplace and the shocking. I can safely reproduce that last lines here because nothing is given away.
'And I marvel, not for the first time, at the secrets people keep, for themselves, and for others, at the sadnesses that betray them, and at the small quiet lives that they continue to live out until the end of their days.'
This is a horror tale and I won't go into any further details on that. Suffice to say that the reaction of Sheila's dog to an old ice house is significant. A sombre and compassionate tale, then, of unhappiness, loss, and the cruelty of convention.
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