Overview

""I cannot endure these frequent fits of terror much longer."" Written in Belfast and Bangor during the partition of Ireland, the six strange stories comprising Conall Cearnach's The Fatal Move are unusual documents of the time. ""Cearnach"" was the pseudonym of F. W. O'Connell, a peculiar Protestant divine, linguist and Irish language scholar, oddball essayist, and early national broadcaster. His sole fiction collection showcases a wide scope: the conte cruel, the ghost story, the locked-room mystery, and the science-fictional satire. What unifies the stories is O'Connell's playful, outward-looking perspective, inspired by his love of the diverse cultures and languages of the world and his home country in equal measure. A unique figure in Irish life, Cearnach's character is perhaps more present in these stories than the anxieties of the time in which they were written. For this volume, Reggie Chamberlain-King provides an extensive introduction examining O'Connell's life and works.

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9781783807796

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Reviews

"""It is questionable whether morbid stories are wholesome. One feels that when in the grip of Poe, and here 'The Fiend That Walks Behind' cannot be recommended to the neurasthenic, to whom the 'terror' is only too constant a reality."" - Irish Times ""Of the weird and creepy genre, and very successful example of it, too."" - Irish Monthly ""Lost fantastical tales from 1924 including some top-class versions of the genre."" - Kevin Gildea ""A delightful change from the usual stuff published nowadays."" - Monster Librarian ""This slight book has much to recommend it to the aficionado of weird fiction, and illuminates some of the more obscure byways of Irish literature."" - Supernatural Tales ""Conall Cearnach comes to us as a species of Edgar Allan Poe with a touch of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle"" - Studies"

Author Information

""Conall Cearnach"" (1876-1929)-F. W. O'Connell-was a polyglot and scholar born in Clifden, Co. Galway. After serving as an Anglican priest, he became the first lecturer of Celtic Languages and Literature at Queen's University, Belfast. Interested in strange literature, O'Connell made the first translation into Irish of Robert Louis Stevenson's Cas aduain an Dr Jekyll agus Mhr Hyde in 1929. O'Connell died tragically when he was struck by a bus in October of that year. Reggie Chamberlain-King is a writer, musician, and archivist of the unusual. With Blackstaff Press, he has published Weird Belfast (2014), Weird Dublin (2015), and The Black Dreams: Strange Stories from Northern Ireland (2021). He is creative producer with Wireless Mystery Theatre and, with composer Martin White, turned E.T.A. Hoffman's Master Flea, into a musical. His audio adaptation of Le Fanu's Green Tea was released by Swan River Press (2019). He is a regular contributor to BBC Radio Ulster and presents documentaries on the strange for Radio 4. He lives in Whitehead, Co. Antrim, with his wife, two dogs, and an unspecified fear.

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