The Springs of Affection

The twenty–one stories collected here—the very best stories of one of The New Yorker's most celebrated writers—trace the patterns of love within three Dublin families. Love between husband and wife, which begins in courtship and laughter, loses all power of expression and then vanishes forever. The natural love of sister for brother and of mother for son is twisted into the rage to possess. And love that gives rise to the rituals of family life—those "ordinary customs that are the only true realities most of us ever know"—grows solid as rock that will never give way.

In his introduction, William Maxwell, who was for twenty years Maeve Brennan's editor, writes of the special quality of her work, and especially of the title story, which he places among the great short fiction of the twentieth century.Maeve Brennan came to America from Ireland in 1934, when she was seventeen. From 1949 through the mid-1970s, she was on the staff of The New Yorker, where she made memorable contributions to "The Talk of the Town" under the pen name "The Long-Winded Lady." She died in New York in 1993.