Sunrise Sunset
ISBN: 9780956272195
€12 (incl. p&p)
Sunrise Sunset
by Tina Pisco
Read Irish Times review by Claire Looby
Surreal, sad, zany, funny, Tina Pisco’s stories are drawn from gritty experience as much as the swirling clouds of the imagination. An astute, empathetic, sometimes savage observer, she brings her characters to life. They dance themselves onto the pages, and waltz around your mind long after the book is put down. This eclectic collection of flash fiction, short stories, a comic book and a novella, is a minefield of surprises.
Tina Pisco’s stories are razor-sharp, poignant and darkly humorous. Gloriously inventive, they feature, among other things, spells, selkies and a very sinister cat; they also feature compelling explorations of human relationships and of the suffering engendered by conflict and displacement. The result is a collection that is both touching, and laugh out loud funny.
Danielle McLaughlin
I loved Ruby and the Red Tent…Long Live all the Denizens of the Red Tent, and those on the outside too.
David Mitchell
The novella, A Carol’s Christmas, is a timely updating of the Dickensian fable and a zippy read with a feminist punch to it. An entertainment with a status-quo challenging message which should be read as a life-saving antidote by anyone who intends to waste their existence in the fruitless and all-round destructive pursuit of money, status, and the ‘business career’.
Dave Lordan
Tina Pisco’s Sunrise Sunset is a fascinating read. This collection of fiction is inhabited by a kaleidoscope of characters from the pimp, the prostitute and the perfect husband of Erase and Rewind – to The Lobster Boat – with the everyday housewife who gradually realises she is not what she seems to be. This book is an Aladdin’s cave of gems that offers the perfect blend of magic surrealism and gritty realism.
Conal Creedon
Tina Pisco needs no introduction – she’s been a presence on the West Cork literary scene for so long that it’s hard to think of her as an outsider – though all writers are outsiders, I suppose – but Tina is the most insidery outsider I know.
She’s a professional writer and I mean that in both senses of the word. She earns her crust through her writing as a novelist, poet, editor, journalist, creative writing teacher and short story writer. But I also mean she’s a professional in the mastery of her craft – in all of these different genres. She’s a pro – and it shows in this collection of her short fiction.
If you think of the short story as a balloon – round, pleasing spherical – then “Sunrise and Sunset” is like a set of party balloons that have been turned by dexterous hands into all sorts of magical shapes – giraffes, rabbits, alligators. In this collection, Tina Pisco shows us the elasticity and sheer inventiveness of the short story. She shows us what the form is capable of.
Mary Morrissy
Acknowledgements
Writing short fiction is probably the most self-indulgent thing that I do. It’s like baking a chocolate ganache tart for oneself. I did not write these stories for anyone but me; for no other reason than that wholly hedonistic thrill of writing that feels almost elicit.
It is therefore with true gratitude that I thank all those who made it possible to bring these self-indulgent fictions to print.
First and foremost, I want to thank Fish Publishing and Clem Cairns. He is of that lost breed of publishers who truly nurture and support their writers over an entire career. It has been my good fortune to call Clem my friend and mentor for over twenty years.
Thanks to Mary Jane Holmes (Senior Editor at Fish) for her muscular edit and eagle-eye. She made my stories clean up, sit up straight, and look their best.
John Noonan worked his graphic magic on the cover and type-setting. My thanks go out to him for producing a beautiful book, as well as for all the love, kindness and support that makes my ordinary pure bliss.
Thanks to Sean Leonard for enticing me into writing for comics, and to James O’Callahan for being the best editor a fledging comic book writer could hope for. Thanks also to Tony Rollison for his excellent artwork on The Spinsters’ House
Thanks to all my friends who have read various versions of the stories over the years: Steven Tate, Kathy Darcy, David Bickley, Stephen Byrne, Mia Gallagher, Madelaine D’Arcy, Anja Bakker… Apologies to all those whom I have forgotten to mention. Many thanks as well, to Conal Creedon, Dave Lordan, Danielle Mclaughlin, and David Mitchell for helping me with the dreaded blurbs.
Finally, thanks to my family: my four daughters, my father, my sister and all the extended Gandiaga and Pisco branches.
Comments are due to the following publications who first published versions of some of the stories: The Fish Garden Anthology, Spolia Magazine, Colony, The Twisted Tales Anthology, The Bogman’s Cannon, and Grayhaven Comics Dark Anthology3.
