Paris Syndrome in the media

Lucy Sweeney Byrne’s Paris Syndrome is garnering some wonderful reviews, such as Darragh McManus’s in Saturday’s Irish Independent:

… there’s a tremendous amount to admire and – sadly, not as common in literary fiction – enjoy here. The book is consistently exciting, invigorating, challenging, surprising. It’s also very funny, Sweeney Byrne mining bright diamonds of humour from the black mud of her anxiety, suffering and morbid boredom.

And she writes brilliantly: every few pages you’ll come across a turn of phrase or moment of insight so inventive, fresh and true, you’ll wonder (enviously, I admit it) how someone so young can produce something this good.

Over at Writing.ie, E.R. Murray called Paris Syndrome ‘exciting and accomplished’:

The collection also plays with form, and this playfulness brings a freshness to the voice, so although the stories have a similar starting point to their narrative – the restless search for something more – they are far from repetitive. One of my personal favourites is ‘Montparnasse’, which is astute, wry, and incredibly funny. Set in a Parisian graveyard, we experience the protagonist’s excruciating inability to feel what she expected, or is expected of her, at Sartre’s grave. Cringe-worthy in its realness, this story perfectly highlights the mastery of Lucy Sweeney Byrne’s ability to dig deep into the human psyche.

Finally, ICYMI, read Lucy herself on different aspects of her writing process: on kenosis over at Dublog, and on music at Writing.ie:

When I hear music, I see images; images of places I have listened to the music before, coming in flashes, trains and woods and streets, or the faces of people with whom I’ve heard it. I see the curve of their spines as they sit across the bed from me, or their bodies in motion, a tiny flit of movement caught like a still in an old film reel; these old haunting presences, caught forever on the beat of a moth’s wing.