Overview

The sixteen linked stories in Mary Ann McGuigan s novel PIECES trace the effects of domestic abuse on a large Irish-American family from 1955 to 2008. McGuigan brings to life not only her primary protagonist, Moira Donnegan, but also Moira s parents, her six siblings, her nephews and nieces, and her husband and children. It is a daunting task to take on such a large cast of characters and multiple points of view and write without melodrama about such subjects as alcoholism and physical and emotional abuse, but McGuigan more than meets the challenge. Each of her characters is distinct and vividly conveyed, and each of her stories expands the significance of the others. By the time you finish the novel, you ll feel like you re one of the family too and you ll celebrate the way they triumph over the dark inheritance of their patriarch s abuse. You will also celebrate McGuigan s masterly storytelling. To say that she is an extraordinarily gifted writer is an understatement, like saying Mount Everest would make a pretty good speed bump. This is a book no lover of fiction should miss. -David Jauss

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9781947504035

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Reviews

The related stories in Mary Ann McGuigan's collection, Pieces, follow the children of the Donnegan family over the years as they try to come to terms with the legacy of alcoholism and domestic violence. Told with a sure voice and an appreciation of the small graces that can come to us in our darkest times, these stories ask us to consider what it means to forgive, what it means to accept, what it means to be a family. -Lee Martin, author of The Bright Forever

Author Information

Mary Ann McGuigan was born in the Bronx, New York, and knows the joys and perils of growing up in a large Irish Catholic family. After graduating from St. Peter s University, she taught English but spent most of her career as a financial editor, mainly for Bloomberg L.P. Her short stories nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Sundress Publications Best of the Net have appeared in North American Review, The Sun, Prime Number, Grist, Perigee, Into the Void, and many other literary journals. Her articles and essays have been published in Word Riot, New York Times, New York Sunday Newsday, Bloomberg Markets magazine, and elsewhere. The New York Public Library, the Junior Library Guild, and the Paterson Prize have ranked Mary Ann s four young-adult novels among the best books for teens, and she has served on the panel of judges for the National Book Award for Young People s Literature. Where You Belong, her second novel, was a finalist for the National Book Award. She now lives in Metuchen, New Jersey

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