Where Have You Been?

O’Connor’s first collection of short stories for 20 years reasserts a mastery of the form... An exhilarating array of sharp dialogue and biting one-liners... A fine compassionate collection

Irish Independent

Full of lovely, delicate perceptive stuff. Joseph O'Connor is in the tradition of masterly Irish writers of short fiction

The Scotsman

Joseph O'Connor's first short story collection in more than 20 years is worth the wait

Emma Hagestadt, Independent

Playful but also at times sorrowful; it allows in great quantities of life, offering the dramas at times a dark edge but also the full glory of our earthly confusion.

Colm Toibin, Irish Times

O’Connor handles poignancy and melancholy with such assurance

Alastair Mabbott, Herald

Superb – very moving and also very sharp… O’Connor has a lovely touch for the nuances of important moments

William Leith, Evening Standard

Some mischievous, caustically funny stories alongside those with a more melancholy spirit

Daily Telegraph

Subtle and beautiful, poignant and perceptive... A fabulous assortment, that will move its readers both to tears and to laughter

Good Book Guide

The seven short stories and one titular novella in this collection are studies of pained love, bereavement, mental disturbance, suicide, economic hardship and thwarted ambition. But this is not a bleak book, and the final novella, despite its grim themes of loss and mental illness, ends in wistful harmony. There is a gentleness and a fellow feeling extended to these bruised lives of quiet despair

Ronan McDonald, Times Literary Supplement