Agnes Owens: The Complete Short Stories

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I wrenched myself off the seat and ran past the hut down the path then up over the top of the island like a mountain goat. It actually contains one of the key moments of the novel, which would not be understood in short story form. She co-authored Lean Tales with Kelman and Gray, contributing nine stories to the book and receiving critical acclaim, with the Irish Times asking why they had heard so little of her as “she is the best of them”.

In “People Like That”, Mary uses this titular phrase to describe an ordinary-looking woman before the label is applied to her.In spite of Owens’s admiration for and friendship with Gray and Kelman, it is worth noting that she was just as equally adamant that her work was very different from theirs.

Owens’ champions point to her class, gender, and age in explaining her neglect; her work is frequently read against her biography.

The silencing of women may be based on other grounds than their gender, it may stem from social contempt for subaltern’s stories or simply from a form of social invisibility. The family continued to live as best they could with her sons following their father’s profession and Agnes finding work as a cleaner. Gentlemen of the West was originally published as a novel, though often seen as a series of short stories. For one of the implications of intersectionality is that in the patriarchal society Owens’s characters inhabit, women are de facto more victimized than men 4 . Romanzo corale costituito da una serie di episodi tra loro connessi, l’opera narra le vicende di Mac, muratore ventiduenne che fatica a sbarcare il lunario nella Glasgow degli anni Ottanta.