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At its core,
The Irish Goodbye, the seventh book by Beth Ann Fennelly, is a sustained meditation on what it means to be human. . . . These essays situate the reader within Fennelly's emotional world while touching on the universality of longing and loss.--Yolanda Peña-Wright "Rhino"
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Beth Ann Fennelly shows us not only is she a writer of prose, not only a poet, but she's essentially done that thing envied among poets and created her own form. . . . She finds such levity where there otherwise may be none, shines bright lights on the paths out of dark places of her world and her mind that she's been. Every time she makes you laugh, she's building something. She's building the serious and good philosophical work only she knows how to manage.--John Caleb Grenn "Clarion Ledger"
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[Fennelly's] essays sparkle with understated delight. Although the book is about the deaths of people, ideas, eras, and self-perceptions, it's a fundamentally optimistic work concerned with exploring both the emotional underpinnings and transformational potential of aging, grief, and love.-- "Kirkus"
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[Fennelly] transforms the mundane into the metaphysical under the heat of her gaze. With a poet's knack for concision and a novelist's deep well of empathy, Fennelly makes everyday moments worthy of close reading-- "Publishers Weekly"
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What a terrific writer! In language as much poetry as prose, and spectacular poetry at that, Beth Ann Fennelly captures the usually overlooked moments of our lives.--Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried
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Beth Ann Fennelly's writing flickers and shimmers like minnows just below the water's surface--quick, sharp, and radiantly alive. Each of these pieces is a marvel of compression and care, where humor sidles up next to heartbreak, and ordinary moments are cast in an enticing, golden light. . . . This book is such a great catch, such a bounty!--Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of Bite by Bite
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In these glittering little memoirs, Beth Ann Fennelly removes one protective garment after another until she exposes the poetry beneath life's troubles and pleasures. . . . If
The Irish Goodbye is a naked self-portrait, then let us all be naked.--Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of The Waters
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Every word in these essays--whether open-armed and loving, brokenhearted and howling, or winking with wit--is perfectly chosen and perfectly placed. . . . This book faces what it means to say goodbye, but it is also absolutely alight with life.--Margaret Renkl, author of The Comfort of Crows
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The Irish Goodbye is a marvelous, masterful book of micro-memoirs that add up to a life full of humor, friendship, motherhood, joy, grief, and love. . . . Beth Ann Fennelly dazzles us with her observations and brevity, her beautiful prose, her enormous heart.--Ann Hood, author of The Stolen Child
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This book knocked me sideways. I tore through it in a day and I'm still trying to catch my breath. . . . I've long been a fan of Beth Ann Fennelly's work, but
The Irish Goodbye is her best book yet.--Jamie Quatro, author of Two-Step Devil
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Beth Ann Fennelly's microscopic prose contains the essence of the pearl: a gem stuck inside a craggy shell, waiting to be discovered. . . . Fennelly draws us in with wonder, awes us with delight. Written with detail and lyricism,
The Irish Goodbye is a treasure.--Renée E. D'Aoust "Rain Taxi"
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While many of her micro-memoirs in the collection take advantage of this kind of wit, Fennelly also uses the brevity of the form to navigate the pain of loss. . . . some of the memoirs in
The Irish Goodbye aren't very micro at all. And these non-micro-memoirs are some of the highlights of the book, preserving all the keen observations and winning charm of their micro cousins, while adding narratives that enrich the collection with new breadth and depth.--Ryan Teitman "Chicago Review of Books"
Publisher Marketing:
What can we learn from an ordinary life observed with extraordinary skill? In The Irish Goodbye, Beth Ann Fennelly writes of the small moments that shape a life, whether moving or perplexing or troubling or gladdening, in the process dignifying the diminutive through the act of attention. Fennelly explores her roles as a friend, wife, mother, and daughter, documenting a brush with an old flame or the devastating death of her sister in crystalline, precise sentences.
The longer essays concern Fennelly's relationships--with a beloved mother-in-law, a decades-long friendship between five former college roommates, an artist who paints a series of nude portraits in Fennelly's town, for which she poses. Interspersed between these longer memoirs are sections of flash nonfiction, a form Fennelly innovated in the genre-defying Heating & Cooling. With dazzling verve and wit, they capture the interstitial interactions--encounters with strangers, quirky observations, unexpected flights of fancy--that make up a richly lived life.
The Irish Goodbye offers a rare pleasure: intimacy. With emotional clarity and nimble prose, Fennelly invites readers to share her affirming worldview--one in which even our smallest interactions are rife with possibility.
Review Citations:
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Booklist 01/01/2026 (EAN 9781324117407, Hardcover)
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Publishers Weekly 12/01/2025 (EAN 9781324117407, Hardcover)
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Kirkus Reviews 12/15/2025 (EAN 9781324117407, Hardcover)
Contributor Bio:Fennelly, Beth Ann
Beth Ann Fennelly, poet laureate of Mississippi from 2016 to 2021, is the author of six books, most recently,
Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs. She lives with her husband and their three children in Oxford, Mississippi.
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