These 13 tales of crime and consequences feature vengeful spirits, warning apparitions, bloody visions and a taunting 'Night Hag' rationalized as 'a dream for the waking, a malfunction of the brain.' ... These stories have an uncanny power to convince. The best of Mr. Neville’s ghost tales can hold their own with those of the Anglo-Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen. But the ultimate prize-winner here, 'Coming in on Time,' a heartbreaking vignette of domestic tragedy seen through the eyes of its youngest victim, hasn’t a trace of the supernatural—only the horror of innocence encountering evil.
The Traveller and Other Stories is the perfect short-fiction collection. It provides an irresistible introduction to the work of author Stuart Neville for those who are unfamiliar with him ... These stories [...] sink the hook and draw one in ... The tales in The Traveller and Other Stories are beautifully crafted. They are also grim, dark and humorless, shot through with people whose lives are running out of a pot-holed road but who knowingly trudge gamely onward toward the inevitable without a deus ex machina or “happily ever after” to be had. How then can one help but be absolutely enthralled by every word that is found here? As you sit comfortably in your chair and bemoan the state of the world these days, read this book. It will put you and all of your blessings in perspective.
Life in contemporary Ireland is bracketed in these 12 tales—all but one of them reprints—by the experiences of young people who’ve scarcely tasted it and veterans who wish they hadn’t. Neville’s foreword notes the pleasure he takes in writing stories that provide a break from the long-haul commitments of his novels. But that break is severely limited by both the stories’ thematic consistency and their recycling of characters and plotlines from the novels ... Irish noir done to a turn, with just enough tearful sentiment to turn the screws tighter.
