The Springs of Affection

A collection of twenty-one stories centering three Irish families from The New Yorker’s acclaimed “Long-Winded Lady,” Maeve Brennan

The stories collected here 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.

With an introduction by William Maxwell, who was for twenty years Maeve Brennan's editor, The Springs of Affection reveals Brennan to be one of the most innovative and important writers of the 20th century.“I have always counted the title story of this volume among my favorites for all time, but I had forgotten how pure and strong so many of Maeve Brennan’s other stories are. It is a great joy to me to have these all together.” —Alice Munro

"Brennan is, for a new generation of Irish women writers, a casualty of old wars not yet won. The prose holds her revived reputation very well, especially the Irish stories. These feel transparently modern, the way that Dubliners by Joyce feels modern. It is partly a question of restraint . . . Brennan remains precise, unyielding: something lovely and unbearable is happening on the page." —Anne Enright

MAEVE BRENNAN left Ireland for America in 1934, when she was seventeen. In 1949, she joined the staff of The New Yorker, to which she contributed reviews, essays, and short stories. Her acclaimed works The Rose Garden, The Visitor, and The Springs of Affection are also available from Counterpoint. Maeve Brennan died in 1993 at the age of seventy–six.