The China Factory

About The Book:
An elderly schoolteacher recalls the single act of youthful passion that changed her life forever; a young gardener has an unsettling encounter with a suburban housewife; a wife who miscalculated the guarantees of marriage embarks upon an online affair. And in the title story a teenage girl strikes up an unlikely friendship with a lonely bachelor.

Love, loss, betrayal. Grief, guilt, longing. The act of grace or forgiveness that can suddenly transform and redeem lives. In these twelve haunting stories Mary Costello carefully examines the passions and perils of everyday life and relationships and, with startling insight, casts a light on the darkest corners of the human heart.

What emerges is a compassionate exploration of how ordinary men and women endure the trials and complexities of marriage, memory, adultery, death, and the ripples of disquiet that lie just beneath the surface. With a calm intensity and an undertow of sadness, she reveals the secret fears and yearnings of her characters, and those isolated moments when a few words or a small deed can change everything, with stark and sometimes brutal consequences.

About The Author:
Mary Costello is originally from Galway and now lives in Dublin. Her stories have been anthologised and published in New Irish Writing, The Stinging Fly, Silver Threads of Hope (New Island, 2012) and Town & Country (Faber and Faber, 2013). She received an Arts Council bursary in 2011. The China Factory is her first book of stories and it was longlisted for the Guardian First Book award in 2012. It was published in April 2013 in Australia and New Zealand by Text Publishing (Melbourne)

Reviews:

"It is the accumulation of tiny pleasures . . . that makes The China Factory such a satisfying and accomplished debut.

Like Alice Munro, Costello is not afraid of a good car accident, a cancer diagnosis, the arrival on the scene of a roaring madman . . . This is a writer unafraid of the graveside, or the bedside, of filling the space of the story to the brim. Large events happen in small lives people die, for a start, they fall in and out of love, they have children and affairs. The slow leaking of love out of a relationship is described in particular and terrible banality, as Costello's characters move about their ordinary rooms. There is a kind of immaculate suburban sadness in many of these tales.

Her writing has the kind of urgency that the great problems demand call them themes; they are the kind of problem that make a writer. With a bit of luck, they could keep her at the desk for the rest of her life."

Anne Enright, The Guardian

"A publishing coup . . . there are shades of John McGahern and William Trevor in many of these disquieting tales of loss and regret but Costello's nimble, exacting prose style is very much her own. The stories engage with the human condition in such a profound way it's no wonder they leave an indelible mark."

Daragh Reddin, The Metro Herald, (4-star review)

"These twelve stories examine the dark side of everyday life . . . Echoing Thomas Hardy, she reveals how even ordinary lives can be full of drama and incident . . . Beautifully crafted but never pretentious, Costello's stories are stark and honest and her characters linger long after you close the book."

Books Ireland

"A recurring theme is that of the disappointments embedded in long marriages, the unmet needs never voiced, the "secret thoughts, unspeakable yearnings".

"In Little Disturbances", we see a man facing his impending death, noticing the world as never before. "The Sewing Room", another strong story, begins in a time when an unplanned pregnancy had, for an unmarried woman, the power to derail her future. In 15 pages, we feel the breadth and depth of a life and its regrets.

The subtl

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