First published 2012 by

THE LILLIPUT PRESS

62–63 Sitric Road, Arbour Hill,

Dublin 7, Ireland

www.lilliputpress.ie

Copyright © Mike McCormack, 2012

Some of these stories have previously been published in the following: Transcript, Irish Independent, Ropes, Irish Book Review, The McGahern Yearbook, Short Fiction and Irish Pages. ‘Take These Chains from my Heart’, Fred Rose and Hy Heath © 1952 Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing. All rights reserved. Used by permission. ‘Some Days are Diamonds (some days are stone)’, Dick Feller © 1975 Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

The author would like to thank The Arts Council of Ireland, An Comhairle Ealaíon, and The Civitella Ranieri Foundation for their support.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher. A CIP record for this title is available from The British Library.

Ebook ISBN 9781843514756

Print ISBN 978 1 84351 270 7