Prosperity Drive by Mary Morrisy review – another view of Dubliners

The lives of residents in a Dublin suburb are fatally stitched together in a series of short stories spanning six decades and several continents

The fictional road that gives its name to the title of Mary Morrissy’s second short story collection is a “paved street of pebble-dashed houses” in a Dublin suburb. A cancer hospital looms over it, and the street’s inhabitants find their minds pulled towards death even as they busy themselves with low-level rivalries and disappointments. All Morrissy’s characters have some connection to Prosperity Drive, and story by story she stitches together a hundred tiny plots, moving backwards and forwards across 60 years, and outwards to Italy, America, Australia and Vietnam. Children playing in one another’s gardens grow up and move away before coming back – several decades and stories later – to care for a dying parent, or because they’re out of a job. Others never come back, but nor do they quite manage to escape the influence of their upbringing. Across 18 stories, Morrissy proves herself a steady observer of the bleakness of everyday life, as well as of the moments when bleakness becomes catastrophe.

Prosperity Drive is published by Vintage (£16.99). Click here to order it for £12.99

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