I Hear You

Series

Name: Salt Modern Stories   Number: 14

Synopsis

This collection of stories, written especially for BBC Radio 4, includes a ten-part sequence: ‘The Circus’, set around Cliftonville Circus, where five roads meet in North Belfast.

It’s five minutes from the nationalist Troubles flashpoint of Ardoyne, where Paul grew up. It’s close to Holy Cross Girls’ School, where protests targeting primary school children drew international attention. The Circus is situated in the poorest part of the Belfast – it is also the most divided.

Each road leads to a different area – a different class – a different religion. The Circus explores where old Belfast clashes with the new around acceptance, change, class and diversity. But this is 2024 and a fresh energy exists.

Other stories include ‘Tickles’, a story about a man visiting his mother in a dementia ward where he finds he is the one who had forgotten important things; ‘Cuckoo’, about a man’s collapse and surgery – where he feels something more sinister has happened to him; and ‘Daddy Christmas’, where a gay man writes a letter to the son he never had.

Praise for this Book

‘These moving short stories are brave, honest, raw and funny, doing what fiction does best, showing us the lives of others and in so doing showing us ourselves. Wonderful.’ —Kit de Waal

‘From a son paring the bunions on his mother’s feet to a man’s soul getting sealed out of his body, and culminating in a deft interlinked cycle, the stories of I Hear You are warm, frank and unsentimental, bursting with character and idiosyncratic detail, written with Paul McVeigh’s characteristic geniality and Belfast wit.’ —Lucy Caldwell

Praise for Previous Work

‘How moving and stunning that story is. It's so raw and incredibly human.’ —Jess Richards

‘Funny, moving, poignant. Brilliant.’ —Metro

‘A pearl of quality … highly original … haunting … superior.’ —The Irish Times

‘A highly commendable debut, convincing in its realism.’ —Lesley McDowell, The Independent

‘His depiction of the time and place – collecting for the black babies, roller discos up the Falls – and the peculiarities of NI vernacular – gazing at girls’ diddies, hoping for a lumber – is transportingly vivid. The effect is often very funny and then touching; the injustice of a line spent half in fear, the pleasure of a life lived half in laughter.’ —Jane Graham, The Big Issue

‘The summer holidays are a time of dread for Mickey Donnelly. Secondary education is looming, but the prohibitive cost of the grammar school uniform has deprived him of his best chance to escape from Belfast’s turbulent Ardoyne neighbourhood. This isn’t the only cloud hanging over the delightful narrator of Paul McVeigh’s debut novel, however: The Good Son’s early-80s backdrop is one of poverty, paranoia and violence, both sectarian and domestic, a terrifying world for a boy whose best friend is his little sister and whose favourite film is The Wizard of Oz.’ —Victoria Segal, The Guardian