Literature at the End of the World

The oddly titled The End of the World Is A Cul de Sac, a debut collection of short stories by the Irish writer Louise Kennedy, is a contemporary publishing unicorn: a work of extraordinary craftsmanship, written by someone who knows something about life. Kennedy, who is 56, published her first novel, Trespasses, in 2022. Before that, she worked in the restaurant industry for 30 years. She is from Belfast, and her fiction mostly concerns the blue-collar Irish women of her milieu who in her stories mostly don’t work; they are usually mothers and dependent on the men in their lives.