'The devil was going around again and everyone knew because it was
in the papers. An usherette in the Metropole saw him at An
Apartment for Peggie, eating oranges in a brown trilby; two women
in Clery's Bargain Basement came upon him fingering cups in a
highly suspicious manner; and The Evening Mail said pretty draper's
assistant, Lily Shine, nineteen, from Cabra West, was dancing with
a fellow in a brown suit when she felt something funny, looked
down, and fainted.' In these unsettling tales of late 1940s Dublin,
young Eily Doolin encounters the gentle foot-fetishist next door,
the 'Argentinian tango-dancer' from Ballybough, the Jewish couple
who introduce her to the delights of carrot cake and Chopin, the
'simple' boy who carries a secret hatred, and, in the climactic
closing story, the devil himself. Along the way there are two
murders, a suicide, and more illicit sex than Eily can comprehend.
Ena May's post-Emergency Dublin is at once recognizable and utterly
unlike all previous literary versions of the city. Her gimlet-eyed
narrator inhabits secret childhood places as well as the grown-up
kitchens and parlours of 'Blarney Park', twitching the veil between
public and private, street and home. Ena May has created a
remarkable narrative voice, perfectly pitched between the knowing
and the naive, the compassionate and the sarcastic, the intrepid
and the bewildered. A Close Shave with the Devil, fables of adults
at play in a child's world, is a tour de force of storytelling, and
a remarkable debut collection.
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