Prosperity Drive

All the characters in this mesmerizing book begin their journeys on Prosperity Drive. Everything radiates out—often internationally—from this suburban Dublin street, and everything eventually returns to it. It is an Ireland in miniature. Like an exploded novel, Prosperity Drive is laid out in stories, linked by its characters who appear and disappear, bump into each other in chance encounters, and join up again through love, marriage, or memory. While each story is discrete, and stands perfectly alone, when read together they have an extraordinary cumulative effect. Through the central drama of the Elworthy family, the collection has a strong narrative arc, very similar to that of a novel, making explicit to the reader secrets withheld from the characters. A stunningly original construction, this journey in stories is very much like life itself: a series of circles and trajectories, a process of learning how to love and how to lose that love.

Mary Morrissy has published three novels—Mother of Pearl, The Pretender, and The Rising of Bella Casey—and a collection of short stories, A Lazy Eye. She has won a Hennessy Award and a Lannan Literary Foundation Award.